In a Singapore where spaces for the dead are often repurposed to meet the needs to the living, it will come as no surprise to find new life being welcomed on a site once devoted to eternal rest at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital – Singapore’s largest maternity hospital. The hospital’s grounds since its move in 1997 from across Kampong Java Road, it was part of a larger site that was occupied by Bukit Timah Cemetery. Singapore’s third Christian cemetery, it was also referred to as “New Cemetery” when it opened in 1865 after the old Christian Cemetery on Fort Canning Hill had reached its capacity.
A view of Bukit Timah Cemetery from the Singapore Heritage Society publication “Spaces of the Dead, a case from the living”.
The cemetery closed to new burials from 1 January 1910, after Bidadari – for which land was acquired by the Municipality in the 1903 – had been opened, but not before a small northwest expansion in 1906 saw its area increased by 0.24 ha. Burials however continued on reserved plots well into the 20th century. Among the graves at the cemetery, were those belonging to Russian and German sailors, and interestingly, that of Singapore’s first Japanese resident, Yamamoto Otokichi a.k.a. John Matthew Ottoson.
Kampong Java Park and its pond.
“Eternal” in the case of the rest that was afforded to those interred in Bukit Timah, was a maximum of a hundred years. The cemetery was exhumed in 1970 to make way for Kampong Java Park – part of which would in the 1990s, be redeveloped for the hospital. The park – the first in Singapore to be provided with lighting – was where Kentucky Fried Chicken opened a well-patronised drive-in outlet in 1979 together with the Kampong Java Squash Complex that it developed. The park has since made way and is now the site of tunnelling work for the future North-South Expressway.
Kampong Java Park with a view to KKH.
Reminders of the Bukit Timah Cemetery can be found on the site of the cemetery at Fort Canning Hill that it replaced, where 12 gravestones deemed to be of historical value were moved to following the exhumation. These stand at the northeast corner of Fort Canning Green.
Gravestones from Bukit Timah Cemetery at Fort Canning Green
Gravestones moved from the ‘New Cemetery’ at the northeastern corner of Fort Canning Green.
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