Singapore history – things you might not know!

Singapore might be a shiny modern city today, but what went on in the past? What were the old days like? If you’re keen to find out, we regularly feature Singapore history in our magazine as part of our monthly column, “The Singapore Pages”. Here, we’ve compiled all the snippets from the print mag covering the island’s heritage – from people and events, to art and architecture – so you can take a step back in time!

A durian encounter from the early 1900s

The cliché of tourists reacting in exaggerated fashion to encountering durian for the first time has been around for ages – well over a century, in fact, as you can see from this excerpt by writer Homer Croy, from a 1915 issue of UK magazine The Wide World.

“I bought one in the street for a shilling. It is about the size of a cheddar cheese and looks like a porcupine. I did not see anything suspicious about its cast of countenance, so I came proudly bearing it into the hotel. The manager sprang up from his desk and laid a trembling hand on the rail. ‘Wait… what are you going to do with that?’

Curious to know why such a harmless fruit should stimulate such immediate interest – with such a pronounced strain of fear – I carried the durian to my room with just a touch of pride.

Placing it on its back, I deftly opened it, revealing a white interior that looked something like a watermelon. Up came such an odour that I staggered back as if someone had thrown something at me. It rose in great volumes and clouds, as if erupted from a volcano. At last, holding my breath, I crept up to it and cut a slice. Even though the odds were overwhelmingly against me, I took a bite – and it was really delicious. It tasted something like a grapefruit, with a certain strain of cantaloupe running through it, and here and there a faint resemblance to a peach…

The durian is a splendid fruit, but unfortunately it is not suited to polite society. Its personal habits are such as to bar it from select circles. It will never become a favourite where light-hearted men and beautiful women gather.”

The story of Bukit Timah’s quarries

A fact file on two pretty wetland spots near the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

Singapore Quarry

This quarry was opened by granite mining magnate Chia Eng Say in the early 20th century and it supplied granite for building the causeway to Johor and the construction of the old Supreme Court building.

Chia Eng Say died in 1942 when caught in crossfire during fighting between Allied forces and Japanese troops in Geylang. Although a select committee recommended closing the quarry in the 1950s, it was active until the 1980s, before being transformed into the nature lookout of today. It’s a popular spot for photographing wildlife, including eagles, kingfishers, dragonflies and turtles.

Why is it named after Singapore itself? Simply because Chia Eng Say’s quarrying business was called Singapore Quarry Co Ltd, and the name got attached to the location.

Getting there: 1km walk from Dairy Farm Car Park A

Hindhede Quarry

This quarry takes its name from Jens Hindhede, a Danish businessman who was active in Singapore in the 1920s and 1930s. Among other things, he was a successful tea farmer. Jens had a famous father, Mikkel Hindhede (1862-1945), a physician and nutritionist who showed that humans are able to survive – even “retain their full vigour” – by eating only potatoes. One of his lab assistants acted as the guinea pig, going almost a year on just spuds and the butter they were cooked in. (Oh, and “a few apple slices”.)

Like the other quarries in the area, this one operated until relatively recently, closing by 1990. The peak of the granite industry in Singapore was 1970, when 25 quarries employed 1,200 workers in Bukit Timah, Pulau Ubin and elsewhere.

Getting there: 250m walk from Bukit Timah Nature Reserve Visitor Centre

Also:

There’s another former granite quarry near the two above, but it looks very different today. Rather than being left to fill with water, Dairy Farm Quarry was backfilled with earth and then grassed over. It’s a great spot for a picnic, surrounded by cliffs that are popular with rock climbers. It’s a 400m walk from Dairy Farm Car Park A.

Speaking of deep things in Singapore, 150 metres below Jurong Island is an area called the Jurong Rock Caverns, which is an oil storage facility that opened in 2014. It has eight kilometres of tunnels and an overall capacity of 1.47 million cubic metres, and is the first facility of its kind in Southeast Asia.

A rock star in Singapore, 1976

Fifty years ago, John Lennon, the former Beatle, slipped into Singapore for a five-day stay. While this was in a relatively quiet period in the artist’s life, when he was on a long break from recording music, he was still keen to avoid the paparazzi. For example, he checked into his hotel using the pseudonym “John Girskin”. (Lennon loved a pseudonym: others he’d used in the past include Joel Nohnn – an almost-anagram of his name, Reverend Fred Ghurkin, Mr Leslie, Dr Winston and Mel Torment.)

That hotel was the Hyatt on Scotts Road – today’s Grand Hyatt – and he is said to have spent most of his time holed up in his room, asking the hotel team not to let anyone know about his location. He did find time for some retail therapy, though, because he was spotted at the Metro Golden Mile. It was located along the Nicoll Highway, close to the Golden Mile Complex, but is no longer there today.

It wasn’t the press who found him, but a Singapore Airlines flight stewardess named Jzenea Foo. Upon seeing the familiar-looking figure walking around the mall, Jzenea asked if he was John Lennon; when he confirmed that he was, she asked if she could be in a picture with him (her friend happened to have a camera).

The New Nation newspaper (published from 1971 to 1982) reported the encounter in a piece on 11 December 1976, saying that Lennon was polite and obliging and agreed to a photo. The article continued:

“Later, when he was going down by the escalator, my friend and I were behind him. He turned around and asked, ‘Are you following me?’ I think he was afraid of being seen by the public,” Jzenea said.

And Jzenea is right, as there’s only one other known public photo of Lennon from his December 1976 trip – he can be seen in a bar in Bugis, in the background of a shot of a couple of expat gents enjoying a few beers. This was John Lennon’s second visit to Singapore, by the way, though his first one barely counts: it was in 1964, when the Beatles landed here at Paya Lebar Airport while returning to London after a tour of Australia and New Zealand. It was a 55-minute stopover, and Lennon didn’t  get off the plane.

Learning the lingo – 19th-century style

Today, we have Duolingo. A century and a half ago, language guides looked a little different. The Traveller’s Malay Pronouncing Hand-Book was a book published in 1886 by the Singapore and Straits Printing Office, and described as “a little work intended for the use of travellers and those who are likely to become residents in Singapore”. It consisted of lists of English terms, sayings and sentences, alongside their Malay equivalents. The book did relatively well, with three editions printed up to 1911. But would it still be useful as a translation aid today? Judging by the following 10 sentences that appear in the text, we have our doubts.

• “Tell the driver to take the carriage to a place where the rays of the sun won’t strike on the horse.”
• “Drive round by the European residences in Tanglin.”
• “Oblige me by calling a shoemaker.”
• “It is twelve noon; the gun has just gone off.”
• “For dinner, give us turtle soup, boiled red mullet, chops, roast capon, roast mutton, curry and rice, and pudding.”
•  “The curry is very pungent.”
• “Fetch me the spy-glass.”
•  “This scythe is worn out, Sir, and won’t cut the grass; I ask you to give me a new one.”
•  “Take this letter to Mr ____, and put it in his own hand.”
• “Tomorrow I am going to Malacca; have the necessary clothes put in this portmanteau.”

A soda-related side note

On the inside back cover of the book is an advertisement for The Singapore and Straits Aerated Water Company, which was located at 15 Battery Road. The ad promotes the company’s range of “aerated waters of the first quality”, including Seltzer Water, Lemonade, Ginger Beer, Limeade, Sarsaparilla and something called Lithia Water.

This beverage company was founded in 1883 by Scotsmen John Fraser and David Chalmers Neave, who also owned the printing business that published the Malay phrasebook. Their surname initials, F and N, would later be used in the company’s brand name “F&N” – which most readers will know from today’s popular sports drink, 100PLUS.

A brief history of cricket in Singapore

A few facts about the “gentleman’s game”.

#1 Cricket was brought to Singapore by the British in the early 19th century, with many of the earliest games being played on the Padang (which was known back then as “The Esplanade”). The Singapore Cricket Club (SCC) was formed in 1852 and is still going strong today.

#2 During World War II, the Japanese military occupied the SCC pavilion on the southern end of the Padang. They used it as a restaurant, which was called Yamoto.

#3 The Australian national cricket team first visited Singapore in 1927, and an English team came 10 years later and played a match here.

#4 Today, Singapore is a full member of the International Cricket Council. In 2019, the men’s team shocked onlookers by beating Zimbabwe – a relative giant in cricketing circles by comparison – in a T20 match. The men’s side is currently ranked 38th in the world – it won Bronze at the SEA Games in 2025. The women’s side is ranked 69th in the world, just ahead of the Philippines.

#5 Over 5,000 cricketers compete in various formats of the game in Singapore, including T20, T25 and T30. Clubs include ANZA, which has teams called the Bushrangers and the Diggers.

Did you know?

• The first mention of cricket in Singapore dates to 1837, when a “Mr Z” complained, in a letter to a newspaper, about the sport being played near a church on a Sunday, in violation of the Sabbath.
• It wasn’t all cricket on the Padang in Singapore’s early days. In 1839, the New Year Sea and Land Sports Carnival was held; it featured a weird and wonderful line-up of competitive events: “greasy-boom walking”, “ducking for coins in molasses”, “goose hunting” and – one we think we’d be good at – “eating ship’s biscuits”.

Ida Pfeiffer – an early travel writer on Singapore

Ida Laura Pfeiffer (1797-1858) – dubbed “the world’s first solo female travel writer” – was a mother of two who set out from her home country of Austria in her mid-40s for a series of global journeys. She is said to have covered 32,000 kilometres on land, and almost eight times as far by sea, covering the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Ida came to Singapore twice; in 1847 and 1851. She seemed impressed with aspects of the town – “on the esplanade close to the sea, carriage followed carriage, young gentlemen on horseback and on foot swarmed about on every side, and one might have thought one’s self in Europe.” Yet, what she really wanted to do was explore the island’s rural areas. “I liked better to visit plantations and similar places than to see old European life here again.”

So, off she went, calling in at fruit farms and adventuring in nature. She found and preserved different animal species – including a new species of mole cricket (Gryllotalpa fulvipes) that wasn’t seen again for almost a century. She paddled up the thickly jungled Kallang River, admiring the “luxuriant underwood, creepers, palm and fern plants; the latter in many instances sixteen feet high”.

When her guide dispatched a large green snake that came too close, he gave it to a group of Chinese men in a nearby hut, who cut it up and roasted it. “I offered them some money and requested them to let me taste it,” writes Ida. “I found the flesh extremely tender and fine, even more delicate than that of young fowls.”

She ramped things up on the second trip to Singapore, staying in an isolated cottage away from town, where she admired the “wonderful forms” of the trees, and enjoyed watching “merry little monkeys springing from bough to bough”. Malay boatmen took her on excursions to offshore islands, including Pulau Ubin, whose geological features she marvelled at.

She spent the rest of her time searching for insect specimens (the picture above shows her with her insect net and specimen bag) and keeping watch for Malayan tigers, whose activity had been increasing in recent times. “Never shall I forget the happy days I passed in that Singapore jungle,” she wrote.

Ida had less happy travel days; she was robbed and injured in Brazil, for example, and threatened by knifewielding cannibals in Sumatra. She was only freed from the latter by saying a phrase she’d learnt in their own language: “Don’t eat me. I am an old woman, so my flesh is very tough.” Her eventual death at 61 was likely from malaria, contracted during an arduous trek through swampy terrain in Madagascar.

Interestingly, the main English-language biography of Pfeiffer – Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer (2019) – was written by John van Wyhe, a prominent British historian of science who works here at the National University of Singapore.

Ida’s books are available at the National Library, and there are excerpts online at Google Books.

History of the Civic District

If you enjoy a good walk and learning something new along the way, Singapore has 24 Heritage Trails – designated trails that wind through different neighbourhoods, from Sembawang to Sentosa, shining a light on the history of each area and telling stories about the people who’ve lived and worked there.

The National Heritage Board (NHB) recently launched a refreshed version of the oldest of these routes, the Civic District Heritage Trail (established in 1999). The area it covers stretches from the Singapore River to Fort Canning Park, Bras Basah Road, and the Padang, with a focus on one of Singapore’s oldest existing thoroughfares, Hill Street. You can see how the area looked a century ago in the photo below.

It was here, in the years after Singapore’s founding, that immigrants from a wide range of backgrounds arrived to start new lives, creating tight-knit communities in the growing settlement.

Aside from some of Singapore’s most famous monuments, the refreshed trail now passes by the Masjid Al-Burhani (below) – a mosque established in the 1800s by the Dawoodi Bohras, a small Muslim denomination from Gujarat in India – and, next door, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry, founded in 1906 to represent the Chinese business community. The latter was built on the site of a mansion belonging to Wee Ah Hood, a leading pepper and gambier merchant in the mid-1800s.

Taking the family on the walk? Don’t miss the Central Fire Station, built in the early 1900s and nicknamed “Blood and Bandage” for its distinct red-and-white brickwork. Today, it still functions as a fire station but is also a gazetted heritage building, and home to the Civil Defence Heritage Gallery. Here, you can explore historic fire engines – including one that the kids can climb into – and learn stories of Singapore’s biggest fires and how the firefighters of the day tackled them.

All the heritage trails are designed to be self-guided, with information plaques along the way. (Guided tours are also available some weekends.)

Limited printed copies of a companion guide and map of the Civic District Heritage Trail are available at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Fullerton Hotel Singapore, the Arts House at the Old Parliament, Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall, and Capitol Singapore; or you can download it here: roots.gov.sg/ places/places-landing/trails/Civic-District-Heritage-Trail.

The Capitol Theatre – 1930 to now

One of the many old buildings you’ll pass by while walking the Civic District Heritage Trail (above) is the Capitol Theatre. Here are five facts about it!

#1 Opened in 1930, the Capitol – financed by Persian businessman Mirza Mohamed Ali Namazie – was one of the biggest and most high-tech cinemas in the East, with seating for 1,600 people and the largest projection room in the world at the time.

#2 The opening night film was Rio Rita, a big box-office hit in America at the time. This was a period when “talkies” were taking cinema by storm, precipitating the end of the silent film era; the Capitol made the most of this with a lavish sound system.

#3 The photo above dates to the late 1930s; the advertised film is Joy of Living, an American musical comedy. It starred Irene Dunne (five-time Oscar nominee and considered one of the best actresses not to have won the award) and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who once visited Singapore to promote a film. On the ground level is signage for Bata, one of the earliest modern shoe stores in Singapore.

#4 After operating as a food depot during WWII, the Capitol Theatre was sold to Shaw Organisation and became that company’s flagship cinema. It also hosted live performances and beauty pageants. It would later close in 1998 (last movie shown: Soldier starring Kurt Russell), and then lie dormant for 17 years, until being redeveloped in 2015.

#5 If the façade in the photo looks familiar, it’s the front of today’s Capitol Kempinski Hotel, which opened in 2018. The theatre itself – still a liveperformance venue today (capitol-theatre.sg) – isn’t directly inside that entrance, but further back in the complex of buildings.

Did you know? Singapore’s first “cinema” was located in a tent; it was set up in 1902 on the corner of Hill Street and River Valley Road by a Parsi showman called Basrai; entry started at 10 cents.

Flashback – F1’s first night race in Singapore

The current F1 season features as many as six night races – or one quarter of all scheduled races for the year. Along with Singapore, locations hosting night races are Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. Of course, Singapore was the first to do so, in its inaugural F1 Grand Prix in 2008. We take a look back at seven things about that debut event.

#1 The 2008 Grand Prix was not only Singapore’s first F1 race (the island had previously hosted Formula Libre events in the 1960s and 70s), it was the first ever Formula One race held at night, and also the 800th F1 race overall.

#2 Around 1,600 light projectors were used to illuminate the track, generating the equivalent of four times the intensity of light used in a standard football stadium. They were installed over a period of five months, using over 108km of electric cable.

#3 While the night-time start alleviated things a little, racing in the Singapore heat was still an intense new experience for drivers, with cockpit temperatures reaching almost 60 degrees Celsius, and up to 3kg in body weight lost over the course of the race.

#4 The 61-lap race was won by Renault’s Fernando Alonso from way back on 15th on the grid. Second place went to Nico Rosberg (Williams), with McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton third. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa had been on pole but finished without a point after prematurely leaving the pits with his fuel hose still attached.

#5 A controversy arose when Mark Webber retired on lap 29 with a gearbox issue. Red Bull Racing later blamed it on an electrical surge caused by a passing MRT train directly below Turn 13. The LTA dismissed the claim, stating that the nearest tunnel was the MRT North-South Line between Raffles Place and City Hall, which was 200 metres away and 10 metres deep.

#6 A much bigger controversy from the race emerged one year later in the form of “Crashgate”, when Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr revealed that his team had told him to deliberately crash on the 15th lap of the race, in order to bring out the safety car and thereby give a sporting advantage to teammate Alonso. Various bans and sanctions followed as a result.

#7 Despite these issues, and a few complaints about the bumpy nature of the track, praise for the event was almost unanimous. Lewis Hamilton said: “The most impressive thing for me is what an amazing job they have done here in Singapore to prepare the circuit. I feel everyone deserves a real pat on the back.

Blast from the past at Biscuit King

If you like a bit of retro in your retail, have a wander through Biscuit King the next time you’re in the Upper Thomson area. One of the EL team stumbled upon the store recently and found a treasure trove of traditional Singapore snacks as well as old-school games like pickup sticks, flag erasers (where two opponents take turns nudging flag-shaped erasers towards each on a table and then try to flick their eraser on top of the other) and card games like Old Maid and Donkey.

As for the food, there are iconic iced gem biscuits (tiny cookies with a dollop of pastel-coloured icing on top), plus schoolyard favourites from decades ago in Singapore including popping candy, Great Monster sweets that were known for turning your tongue a different colour, and sweet-and-sour Haw Flakes made from hawthorn berries (an acquired taste, apparently!).

The store is at 130 Casuarina Road, just a few doors down from another Singapore institution, Casuarina Curry (which opened here over 30 years ago).

A forgotten iron fountain

The following photo is of an ornate cast-iron fountain that can today be found in the Palm Garden of Raffles Singapore.

The fountain was manufactured in the late 19th century by renowned Glaswegian ironwork foundry Walter MacFarlane & Company, which was also responsible for building the iron frame of the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre. And while they did also provide some ironwork for parts of Raffles Hotel, the fountain itself was originally installed at Lau Pa Sat – in the very middle of what was then known as the Telok Ayer Market.

For unknown reasons, the fountain was disassembled in 1902 and moved to a plaza outside Orchard Road Market. It was later taken down a second time… and then completely forgotten about for decades!

In 1989, the pieces were rediscovered. After being certified as the genuine original pieces, they were put together again in their current location in the Palm Garden.

Above is a detail from another wellknown iron fountain in Singapore – the Tan Kim Seng Fountain. It’s located in Esplanade Park and was erected in 1882 (made by Andrew Handyside and Company in England) to honour philanthropist Tan Kim Seng. It was gazetted as a national monument in 2010.

South Bridge Street, 1965

Singapore became a sovereign republic in 1965. But what did the new nation look like back then? For a tiny glimpse, here’s a photo – attributed to Steve Swayne from Maleny in Queensland, Australia (a tourist, we’re guessing) – taken in that very year on South Bridge Street. It shows a busy day in Chinatown.

We’ve done some sleuthing and we’re quietly confident from the shapes of the buildings (including the Sri Mariamman Temple that can be spotted down the road on the left), that the photographer is standing at the junction of Sago Street and South Bridge Road, looking northeast. Behind his left shoulder was the block that would later house the Buddha Tooth Relic Centre (opened 2007); behind his right shoulder was Maxwell Market, which would reopen as the Maxwell Road Food Centre in 1987.

The bus on the right is likely a silver-coloured trolley bus operated by the Singapore Traction Company (STC). That company would merge with other companies to form today’s Singapore Bus Services (SBS) in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the trishaw operator on the left was perhaps unaware that the upcoming independence of Singapore would lead to rapid modernisation and the decline of his industry.

One store on the left seems to be a consignment and packing company. Another is a purveyor of medicinal oils and balms, much like the Teck Soon Medical Hall, which occupies a similar position in the street today.

Oh, and for the record, jaywalking only became illegal in Singapore in 1977, so the fellow in the middle of the street is in the clear!

Who was Desker?

If you’ve explored Little India on foot, you may have walked along Desker Road – it’s just south of the Mustafa shopping mall. The street gets its name from a 20th-century Eurasian man named Andre Filipe Desker, who was born in Malacca and moved to Singapore in the 1840s where he established a butchery business that became a great success. He built the island’s largest slaughterhouse, where he kept Australian sheep in pens, and he became known for the regular supply of quality mutton.

Desker, who had 13 children with his wife Esmerelda Bruyns, was also known for his philanthropy, supporting local Catholic schools and churches. He died in 1898 at the age of 72. The name “Desker” is thought to be an anglicised version of the Portuguese “Desquer” or “De Sequeria”.

About Eu Tong Sen

What’s the connection between the British Army’s Royal Tank Regiment – the oldest tank unit in the world – and one of the busiest streets in Chinatown in Singapore?

The link relates to the old Chinese tradition of painting eyes on the sides of trading boats and junks (which is upheld today in the sport of dragon boating, in the form of the “Eye Dotting Ceremony”). This phenomenon is mentioned in a quote from 1890 in an English kids’ magazine called Little Folks:

“Why a boat should have eyes is probably not quite clear to you, but the Chinese sailor thinks them absolutely necessary. So the junks of the Flowery Land all have pairs of eyes painted on the side of their bows, and the native sailor will not sail in a vessel that has not got them.”

The tradition jumped from sea to land when, in 1917, the Royal Tank Regiment (then known as the Royal Tank Corps) painted eyes on the sides of a tank for the first time.

That tank had been a gift to the Allied war effort from Mr Eu Tong Sen (1877-1941), a prominent and very wealthy businessman in Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore; he requested that the tank bear the same painted eyes as on Chinese boats and junks. It remains a tradition of the regiment to this day.

Eu Tong Sen is best known as the founder of a traditional Chinese medicine business, which now has more than 40 outlets in Singapore. He also contributed money to what would later become the National University of Hong Kong, and acted as Vice-President of the Anti-Opium Society.

When he was in Singapore, Eu Tong Sen lived in “a castle with a garden and a lake”. (With 11 wives and 24 children, he needed lots of room!) Along with having a passion for motorcars and horse-racing, he was also a lover of theatre and performance; for instance, he is said to have invited the Shanghai-based Shaw brothers (later of Shaw Theatres fame) to Singapore for a visit.

After he acquired two Chinese opera theatres on Wayang Street, and built a third, the street was renamed in his honour in 1919.

Today, Eu Tong Sen Street is a major Singapore thoroughfare stretching between the Singapore General Hospital in the south and the Singapore River in the north.

A Singapore Christmas, 1895

For expats accustomed to a White Christmas, celebrating the 25th of December in the tropics can take some getting used to. And it’s always been the way! Here’s an excerpt of an article from the 1895 edition of US literary magazine The Overland Monthly, written by then editor-in-chief, American journalist Rounsevelle Wildman, who was based in Singapore at the time.

“We went to church at half-past ten. The weather was intensely hot, and yet we drove to the great English cathedral [St Andrew’s] on the Esplanade, and braved the blinding glare of the sun, just to keep up a simulation of the Christmas we observe in distant homes. Our ordinary garb of pure white linen and cool cork helmets we had discarded for woollen suits – so hard did we try to delude ourselves into a familiar Christmas feeling.

The night before, on Christmas Eve, I saw a hundred or so men – rich ship-owners, high officials – try to do the same thing. Their wives were at home in England or Germany, recuperating after a long term in the Orient. Those that had no wives were younger sons and brothers. All had met at the club to spend Christmas Eve.

In the center of the room was a casuarina decorated with candles, toys, candies and penny balloons; just such a tree as they would have gone into raptures over in their childhood. At its foot were the presents.

An orchestra played outside under the wide-spreading arms of a great banyan tree, and spotlessly dressed Chinese boys circled about with refreshments. Songs were sung, everyone cheered and slapped each other on the shoulder, and yet everyone knew that it was a pitiful failure.

Between laughs, faces grew grave, and faraway looks filled tired eyes. They were wondering what wives, mothers and friends were doing on that night in the blessed land of the snows…

Later, at a dinner gathering, Wildman finally seems to find some peace in the fact that spending Christmas in Singapore is very different to “back home”. That night, thirty of us met to eat a Christmas dinner. There were no great fires of blazing Yule logs; no mistletoe, no snow beating against window panes, no passing sleigh-bells; none of the vigorous and bracing winter sounds with which we of the Northern Zone were familiar.

But there was an ethereally beautiful sky, studded with innumerable stars and jewelled with the Southern Cross.

There were mild breezes, heavily laden with the intoxicating perfumes of the profuse tropical life outside, and the soft cooing of the ring-dove in a hibiscus bush nearby. There was a realisation that on such a brilliant night, the first Christmas was celebrated on this same continent, and not amid the longed-for snows and ice of our native land.”

In the same article, Wildman lists the Christmas presents he received from a visitor to his Singapore home:

• A leg of Shanghai mutton
• Pisangs (bananas), mandarins, pomelos and “a peck of mangoes fresh from Bangkok”
• A box of Manila cigars
• Two bottles of water (imported from Florida in the US)
• A big English almond cake
• A tin box of sweets

A famous British naturalist

If you’ve had a wander in Dairy Farm Nature Park, then you’ll have been to the Wallace Education Centre, and likely strolled along the Wallace Trail. These two places are named for British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the biggest minds of the 19th century! Here are five interesting things about him.

#1 Born in 1823 in Wales to English and Scottish parents, Wallace worked first as a surveyor, teacher and engineer, before beginning his many travels to chronicle the natural world. His first trip (1848-1852) took him to South America, but he lost nearly all of his specimens and notes in a fire on his ship when heading home.

#2 The Far East beckoned, and Wallace arrived in Singapore in 1854, using it as a base for eight years while studying wildlife across Southeast Asia. In that time, he collected an incredible 125,000 different insects and birds – and up to 5,000 were completely new to science! His studies included the jungles of Bukit Timah and today’s Dairy Farm Nature Park, where he found 700 species of beetle alone.

#3 If he’d timed things a bit better, Wallace may today be associated with the theory of evolution rather than Charles Darwin. The two men were acquaintances and amazingly developed similar theories around natural selection at the same time. In fact, a letter from Wallace to Darwin may have sparked the latter into more quickly publishing his famous work On the Origin of Species.

#4 Wallace was perhaps the first person to refer to the durian as “The King of Fruits” in writing, praising it in his journals for its appearance, texture, flavour – even smell!

#5 Wallace was an incredibly prolific writer, penning 22 books and 747 shorter works in his lifetime. One book, Man’s Place in the Universe (1904), is considered the first detailed attempt by a scientist to consider the likelihood of life on other planets.

Did you know? The Wallace Education Centre is located in a converted cow shed. Around 800 cows were once reared in this part of Singapore (hence “Dairy Farm”)

An old church in Bukit Timah

Just north of Dairy Farm Road is St Joseph’s Church, a striking Gothic Revival-style church built by Portuguese missionaries in the 1850s (and one of two churches with the same name in Singapore – the other St Joseph’s is in Victoria Street in the city). Outside is a shrine to Our Lady of Fatima; inside, Portuguese tiles known as azulejos can be found, and the interior arches are painted blue, in contrast to the white walls and red carpet.

When it was built, Bukit Timah was smack dab in the middle of the jungle. While this location made life difficult for the Catholic priests who had to deal with marauding tigers and also gangs and robbers, it was ideal for an enthusiastic scientist wanting to explore the flora and fauna of the area. And that’s exactly why Alfred Russel Wallace (above) used it as his Singapore base. He stayed at the church with a French Roman Catholic missionary, taking daily forays into the hilltops to find new insects and birds.

stjoseph-bt.org.sg

End of an era – the Singapore Turf Club

October 2024 marked the closure of the Singapore Turf Club, with the final race meeting taking place at Kranji on 5 October. Here’s a quick look back at the 182-year history of horse racing on the island.

#1 The earliest iteration of the Singapore Turf Club was opened by a Scottish merchant, William Henry Macleod Read, on 4 October 1842. It was known as the Singapore Sporting Club (SSC).

#2 The first race course was built over four months on swampy land in what is today’s Farrer Park. Of course, Race Course Road in Little India takes its name from its proximity to the original course.

#3 The first race was held on 23 February 1843 to mark the 24th anniversary of Stamford Raffles’ founding of Singapore. Called the Singapore Cup, it was won by none other than club founder William Henry Macleod Read! (He also organised Singapore’s first ever rowing regatta in the same year…)

#4 After the SSC was renamed the Singapore Turf Club (STC) in 1924, it moved from its Farrer Park location to Bukit Timah in 1933, to a former rubber plantation. Opened by Sir Cecil Clementi, the three-storey grandstand was designed by the architects of Raffles Hotel, and included 2,000 armchairs made of teak.

#5 Aside from a period in World War II when the grandstand became a hospital, the STC operated at the Bukit Timah location until 1999. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1972 (and watched a race held in her name), and English singer Rod Stewart played in front of 8,000 people there in 1995.

#6 In 1999, Kranji became the new home for the Singapore Turf Club. Opening day on 4 March 2000 featured a $3-million opening race won by the only Singaporean jockey in a field of 14! It was the first Singapore horse race broadcast live worldwide.

#7 The Kranji closure was announced in June 2023; the land will be handed back to the government in 2027 for redevelopment. Meanwhile, the former Turf Club at Bukit Timah is also set for redevelopment, after operating from 2002 to 2023 as retail hub and leisure centre Turf City.

Did you know? Apart from hosting horse racing, the original race course at Farrer Park also played a role in Singapore’s aviation history. On 16 March 1911, the island’s first flight took off from there – a Bristol Boxkite biplane piloted by Belgian aviator Joseph Christiaens.

Historic taxi hut

In today’s app-driven world, the first step to getting a taxi in Singapore is to pull your smartphone out of your pocket.

Things used to be different, of course – and some visible evidence of this can still be seen in a small estate off Upper Thomson Road. Sembawang Hill Estate on Jalan Leban is home to a hawker centre, a petrol station and a modest collection of shops and restaurants. It also has this small hut that we photographed while in the area recently, which is signposted “Sembawang Hill Estate Taxi Services”.

The hut, consisting of red bricks, timber panels and glass louvres, was built over half a century ago. Two original benches that sit outside the structure today date back to 1968 and include a telephone number of just five digits: “59924”. (Singapore phone numbers didn’t have eight digits until the mid-1990s.)

Taxi drivers would have congregated at the hut in the past, either to wait to get a booking from people phoning in, to pick up customers who walked by the hut looking for a lift, or to socialise between jobs.

Apparently, the petite building is still maintained by a group of drivers today (it has its own letterbox at the front door, and has been strewn with some colourful lanterns and decorations).

There are more taxi services huts in Singapore, including the Boon Lay Garden Radio Taxi Service, which was popular with people looking to travel further afield than normal – to Tuas, for example, or into Johor – and another at the corner of Clementi Road and Ulu Pandan Road.

NDP firsts, from 1966 to now!

The National Day Parade, held on 9 August each year, has changed a lot over its long history. Here’s a look back at some innovations.

• 1966: The first ever National Day Parade – it was held on the Padang
• 1970: The Singapore Air Force performed its first NDP flypast
• 1973: The show moved from a regular morning time slot to afternoon/evening
• 1984: The first fireworks display was held

• 1989: The Red Lions parachute team debuted
• 2003: An electronic ticketing ballot was introduced because of overcrowding
• 2007: The NDP was held for the first time on the Marina Bay Floating Platform
• 2014: The Red Lions team featured its first female jumper
• 2015: The first NDP without Lee Kwan Yew in attendance
• 2017: The first 360-degree YouTube live stream of the NDP
• 2020: The NDP was held as a series of broadcast-only events because of COVID
• 2021: More COVID disruptions, with the parade postponed until 21 August
• 2022: The last edition to be held at The Float in Marina Bay
• 2024: The 40-year anniversary of Singapore’s national defence concept, Total Defence
• 2026: The NDP returned to its former location, the National Stadium, only in the shiny new version of the stadium rather than the old one

A painter not a fighter

This 19th-century painting of Singapore, below, is taken from an album of watercolours and pencil drawings by Walter Spinks, who was a soldier on the survey ship HMS Myrmidon that travelled from England to Australia via Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia in the 1880s. Spinks made other trips, too, documenting his voyages with artworks, which, like this one, were typically landscape paintings of major ports, with a focus on ships. His earlier subjects included Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Port Said, Aden and Colombo. The Singapore painting has a few quirky features, including a spelling error in the caption (“Signapore”); the structure on the hill in the middle is most likely Fort Canning.

The New South Wales Police Gazette from 1886 describes Spinks as 30 years old, with a height of 5 foot 5½, a fair complexion, light brown hair and blue eyes. It also lists him as a “deserter” – maybe the pull of painting was just too strong for Spinks that he decided to go AWOL…

The island formerly known as… Sabana?

The name “Singapore” likely dates back to the late 1300s, when the Malay prince Sang Nita Utama landed on the island, known as Temasek, while on a hunting trip. His sighting of what he thought was a lion led to the name “Singapura” (“Lion City” in Sanskrit) being bestowed on the new settlement established at the time.

While the modern name of today’s little red dot has therefore been around in some form for six and a half centuries, the island itself may have been referred to in literature a long, long time before that.

In the second century, a Greek scholar and mathematician named Ptolemy, who was living in Egypt during the Roman Empire, compiled an atlas known as the Geography. In it, he discussed the “Golden Chersonese” – a reference that most scholars agree is to the Malay Peninsula. The name comes from stories that reached Europe in ancient times about this part of the world being full of gold deposits. Ptolemy refers to a place called “Sabana”, located at the very tip of this metal rich peninsula – possibly the first surviving mention of the island we’re all now standing on.

The image shown above is a 15th-century map based on Ptolemy’s text; Europe is at the top left and the Malay Peninsula at the far right (with an oversized Sri Lanka sitting in the ocean in the middle)

Cinema history – the other Cleopatra

Among recent exhibitions at the ArtScience Museum was one that celebrated 120 years of female screen legends and their cinematic achievements, from Hollywood to Bollywood and here in Singapore. Titled “Goddess. Brave. Bold. Beautiful”, the exhibition highlighted over 150 costumes, artefacts and objects that helped paint a visual narrative of women in film.

Among those featured was Singaporean actress Doris Young – screen name Marrie Lee – who starred as a female Interpol agent from Singapore in They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong. Never heard of this 1978 cult classic action film? Here’s some trivia about it!

#1 The film’s tagline was: “She purrs like a kitten, makes love like a siren. This side of the Pacific, she’s the meanest, deadliest and sexiest secret agent.”

#2 Marrie Lee did her own stunts in the film (and suffered several injuries in the process), from jumping through a glass window to hanging from a chopper by a rope, and taking on countless bad guys with her martial arts moves. One of her many fight scenes takes place on Sentosa, which had only recently opened as a leisure destination.

#3 The film was released in the UK as Female Big Boss.

#4 The character of Cleopatra Wong is said to have inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films.

#5 Renowned long-time Singapore radio presenter Brian Richmond appeared in the film as Cleo’s Singapore boss. Another local action star in the exhibition is Fann Wong, who became the first Singaporean actress to break into Hollywood, starring alongside Jackie Chan in Shanghai Knights (2003).

Chinatown’s heritage businesses

Chinatown’s Five Foot Way Festival celebrates early Chinese immigrants and their trades, clans, arts and culture. The name comes from the “five-foot way” – the continuous covered walkway (five feet in length) that links shophouses across Singapore.

The festival also acknowledges the many multigenerational businesses in Chinatown who still thrive today, despite rapid change and development. Here’s a quick look at three of them!

#1 Say Tian Hng Buddha Shop

Founded in 1896 by two brothers from Kinmen, Say Tian Hng Buddha shop has made, sold and repaired Taoist idols for well over a century. (Its business origins can be traced back to the 14th-century Ming dynasty!) Currently located at 35 Neil Road, Say Tian Hng is helmed by fourth generation co-owner Ng Tze Yong, and still produces the only handcrafted Taoist statues in Singapore. It also now offers educational programmes to locals and tourists.

#2 Tong Heng

Mr Fong Chee Heng began as a humble drinks vendor at Pasir Panjang in the late 1920s, before opening a shop in the heart of Chinatown in 1935 and expanding into Cantonese-style pastries. This was when his passion for pastries flourished, and the signature Tong Heng egg tart was born. Today, third-, fourth- and fifth-generation family members work in the business – one of Singapore’s oldest traditional Chinese pastry shops – producing the renowned handmade diamond-shaped egg tarts.

#3 On Cheong Jewellery

On Cheong was founded by Mr Ho Yew Ping in 1936, who left Guangdong to work as a goldsmith apprentice in Penang and Ipoh. At 25, he came to Singapore and set up On Cheong Goldsmith – named for a Chinese idiom symbolising “peace and prosperity”. The shop relocated from North Bridge Road to a site in Chinatown in 1941 (still one of its two locations now), where most Chinese immigrants resided. Today, this long-standing family-run business is known as On Cheong Jewellery.

Find out more at chinatown.sg.

A (moon)walk back in time

In recent years, the likes of Taylor Swift and Coldplay have brought their huge global tours to Singapore, with a string of sold-out shows at the National Stadium.

Before these mega-concerts, Singapore’s biggest live music events were Michael Jackson’s two tours in the early to mid 1990s. The King of Pop first performed here in 1993 during the Dangerous World Tour. He played two sold-out shows, with around 80,000 concertgoers in attendance – a new attendance record for a concert here. The record stood for more than 30 years, before being broken, first by Coldplay and then again by Taylor Swift.

Jackson stayed at Raffles in 1993. He apparently requested the Singapore Zoo to close for a day so he could pay a personal visit; this was declined, but some zookeepers did drive the famous orangutan Ah Meng across to Raffles for a personal meet-and-greet with MJ by the hotel pool.

While the first of the two 1993 concerts went off without a hitch, the second was postponed at late notice (the crowd was already in the stadium). Jackson was said to be suffering from “acute vascular headache”; the performance was pushed back a couple of days.

Jackson returned for the HIStory tour in 1996 – with five private jets and an entourage of 180 people, including private chefs. The concert was a more modest affair, with 26,000 concertgoers in attendance. During the tour, paparazzi snapped the star buying electronics at Sim Lim Square. We’re not sure if he caught up with Ah Meng again.

Setlist from Michael Jackson live in Singapore, 1 September 1993:

Jam | Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ | Human Nature | Smooth Criminal I Just Can’t Stop Loving You | She’s Out of My Life | I Want You Back | Thriller | Billie Jean | Someone Put Your Hand Out | Will You Be There | Dangerous | Black or White | We Are the World | Heal the World | Man in the Mirror

Snapshot from the war

This year marks the 84th anniversary of the Fall of Singapore in 1942. The photo below shows a street scene in happier times at the end of the war. Its caption reads: “8 and 9 September 1945: Signalman C Latham of Manchester and Tel B Watson of Dumfries seeing the sights of Singapore by ‘taxicle’.”

The setting is likely to be High Street, judging from the poster in the background for K.A.J. Chottirmall & Co, a fabric and garment store. Today, this is a short, nondescript street off Parliament Place, but until the 1950s it was among Singapore’s premier shopping streets. It was also one of the very first colonial roads on the island, built in the 1820s.

Singapore Cable Car, 1974 to now

A fact file on the famous aerial tramway that links Singapore with Sentosa.

#1 Did you know the Singapore Cable Car is over 50 years old? It was opened on 15 February 1974 by then Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, after a $5.8 million, two-year construction period. Together with his wife, Dr Goh took the very first ride, seated on the yellow plastic bench of Cabin Number 1.

#2 At the time of opening, it was only the second cable car system of its kind in the world to span a harbour – after one in Barcelona, Spain. (Some sources claim Singapore was first.)

#3 In 1974, there were 43 cabins, with doors that were manually operated by attendants. This number increased over the years to a peak of 81 cabins, but the number was reduced during a major renovation in 2009-2010 to allow for more spacious cabins. There are 67 cabins in today’s system.

#4 In 1979, an episode of the popular American TV show Hawaii Five-O called “The Year of the Horse” filmed some scenes on the cable car.

#5 In 1988, the attraction welcomed its 10 millionth passenger. This number doubled by 1995. Approximately 60 million passengers have now ridden the Singapore Cable Car since its launch.

#6 In 1998, in-cabin dining was introduced – a first for a cable car system in Asia.

#7 World-first glass-bottom cabins were introduced in 1999

#8 A new section of cable, called the Sentosa Line, was added in 2015 – it runs from Siloso Point to Imbiah Lookout, both on Sentosa.

#9 In the lead-up to the 50th anniversary in 2024, the interiors of the fleet of 67 cabins were decked out in Pokémon characters with a festive Christmas theme in late 2023, along with Poké Ball decals on the cabin exteriors.

#10 The birthday celebrations also saw the launch of the Cable Car’s “NextGen” cabins. Call SkyOrb, these are the world’s first chrome-finished, spherical cable car cabins.

Round trips on the Singapore Cable Car start from $28 for adults and $20 for children (online purchase). Find out more at mountfaberleisure.com.

50 years of colour TV

Along with the Cable Car opening for business, what else happened in Singapore in 1974? It was the momentous year when Singapore enjoyed its first ever broadcast of colour television. While black-and-white TV had arrived back in 1963, on 7 July 1974, at 10.20pm, Channel 5 showed the FIFA World Cup final between West Germany and the Netherlands in full colour. Apparently, around 2,000 colour TV sets were sold in Singapore in the lead-up to the game.

Despite wearing a vibrant orange strip that seemed perfect for the occasion, the Netherlands lost 2-1 to the black-and-white-clad West German team.

Secrets of Keppel Hill

If you enjoy an off-the-beaten-track adventure with a bit of history thrown in, you’ll love having a nose around this Singapore location.

Next time you set off in a cable car from the station on Mount Faber Road, heading for Sentosa, take a look down once you’re airborne. You’ll see a slope of thick, green jungle directly below. This is Keppel Hill – and, as we discovered on a recent walk, there’s more than just vegetation down there! In fact, its muddy trails hide three interesting historic sites.

#1 Seah Im Bunker

Ang Seah Im was a tin mining businessman at the beginning of the 20th century; the popular hawker centre across from HarbourFront is named after him. Beside the centre is the Seah Im Carpark, and if you walk to the giant kapok tree at the back of that carpark and slip through a gap, you’ll find yourself facing a foreboding hole set in brickwork in the distance. This is the Seah Im Bunker.

You can walk a short way into the bunker (bring mosquito repellent and a torch – oh, and a bit of courage!); it’s only a metre high, so you’ll need to crouch, but after a few metres you’ll reach a doorway on the right, which opens to a small room with a 2.5-metre ceiling.

That’s the extent of the bunker – there’s not much there, but it’s an interesting place to ponder its likely age and what it might have been used for. Most argue it was a storage bunker for ammunition in WWII, or perhaps even a place for POWs.

#2 Keppel Hill Reservoir

To the left of the bunker, you’ll find a rope to help you get up a short, steep section of the trail. From there, it’s around a five-minute walk uphill to the Keppel Hill Reservoir. (The track isn’t obvious, but as long as you’re heading northwards and upwards, you should be able to follow it. There are plenty of websites with very detailed instructions.)

While today it’s swallowed up by jungle and filled with stagnant water, the reservoir was a hive of activity in the past. Likely built between 1899 and 1905, it served two purposes, first as a water source (known as the Keppel Harbour Power Station Reservoir), and then as a swimming pool. Around the 1950s, it fell into disuse. Stories of fatal drownings may have precipitated its demise. Not long after, it dropped off contemporary maps of Singapore, only to be officially “rediscovered” in 2014.

Some remnants of history remain here, including a staircase leading to nowhere (presumably a diving board was attached at one time), but it’s mostly just a nice spot to stop on a jungle walk.

#3 The tombstone of Komoto Ekasa

Head higher up the hill, and in an easterly direction, and the trail pops out at Mount Faber Road. Before that, you’ll arrive at a leafy grove that’s home to an old tombstone. Commemorated here is Komoto Ekasa, a naval engineer who lived in Singapore during the Japanese occupation in World War II.

Inscriptions on the stone tell his life story: born 1895, graduated from Tokyo University in 1920, worked for two decades for the Mitsubishi Kobe Ship Construction Company. He died in July 1942 from an unspecified illness only a few months after arriving in Singapore. While here, he supervised repair work on Keppel Harbour, which had been damaged in the war. It’s interesting that a tombstone this prominent sits alone on this slope – and not in the Japanese cemetery in Kovan in the east of the island, for example.

Leading down from the tombstone are remnants of a red brick staircase, where you’ll see the word “Alexandra” stamped into the bricks. This shows that the staircase was constructed with materials supplied by the Alexandra Brickworks, the first brickyard in Singapore to use modern machines for large-scale production. At the start of WWII, it was helmed by a Brit named Tyrrel Goskar. He and his wife Irene lived in the Manager’s House on Alexandra Road. The Japanese took over the brickworks in 1942, renaming it Syonan Renga Kogyo.

It closed in 1972, after seven decades of operation, and today the area near the junction of Pasir Panjang Road and Alexandra Road is still known as Brickworks Estate. The ABC Brickworks Food Centre is here too.

Getting there

For those seeking an adventure and not put off by the prospect of muddy shoes, the bunker, reservoir and tombstone hidden away on Keppel Hill are all worth a look. There are no official paths through the jungle; from the top, a trail begins just below the cable car station (but can be hard to find). From the bottom, head to Seah Im Car Park and look for the aforementioned starting point beside the kapok tree.

100 years on College Road

This photo from 1924 shows a gathering of members of the League of Nations, which was established in 1919 after World War I and served as a predecessor of the United Nations. The group of suited gents were apparently in Singapore to take a medical course on malaria; and it’s likely that the man seated in the middle of the front row is renowned British doctor Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932), who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the mosquito-borne disease.

Behind them is the newly constructed King Edward VII Medical College, the first school of medicine in Malaya. Known today as the College of Medicine Building, it’s located on 16 College Road, in the grounds of the Singapore General Hospital at Outram Park.

Gemmil Fountain – Singapore’s first public water dispenser

Gemmill Lane, an alleyway of stylish eats and drinks off Club Street, is named after John Gemmill, a Brit who came to Singapore shortly after its establishment. He worked initially as a shopkeeper – and when the Singapore Temperance Society formed in 1837, he promptly advertised that you could buy booze at his shop! He later became Singapore’s first auctioneer and also a private banker before an official bank opened on the island. Business was obviously good, as he purchased a piece of land called Scott’s Hill and renamed it Gemmill’s Hill; today, it’s Ann Siang Hill.

One other Singapore feature has retained his name: the Gemmill Fountain. In 1864, Gemmill donated Singapore’s first public drinking fountain to the island. It’s a simple marble structure with a lion’s head carved into it, and a waterspout in the lion’s mouth. An inscription on the marble reads: “For the use of all nations, at Singapore, this drinking fountain of pure water is the gift of John Gemmill formerly of this island and now of London 1864”.

The fountain was originally in Raffles Place (it’s visible on the right side of the photo above, circa 1890), then moved to near Town Hall. The lion’s mouth was damaged in World War II but later restored, and in 2010 the fountain was installed in the grounds of the National Museum. It still works, too, so if you need a drink after a long museum session, you know where to go!

Singapore River in stamps

One of the sets of commemorative stamps released in recent times by the National Library Board and SingPost had a focus on the history of the Singapore River.

Pictured below is one of four stamps in the set, this one showing Presentment Bridge, a wooden footbridge built in 1823. Also known as Jackson’s Bridge (after the lieutenant who supervised its construction), this was the earliest known bridge to span the Singapore River. It joined North Bridge Road with South Bridge Road and could be raised in the middle to let boats pass underneath. Today, Elgin Bridge stands on the same location.

The stamp is based on a drawing by William Robinson (1804–1827), a midshipman on the HMS Rainbow, which sailed into Singapore in 1826.

The three other stamps in the collection feature sketches made by other international visitors to the young settlement in the early- and mid-19th-century, one depicting boats on the Singapore River, another showing the view to Pearl’s Hill in Chinatown, and a third of Government Hill (today’s Fort Canning).

Did you know? Speaking of stamps, the beginning of a regularly scheduled international airmail service began in 1927, with flights between the USA, Canada and Cuba. In Singapore, 5 October 1928 marked the day that the first letter was sent abroad stamped with “By Air Mail”/”Par Avion”. Having said that, it initially travelled by boat all the way to Marseille, before being flown to London!

Films and food in the 1980s

This photo, below, from 1984 shows the New Town/New Crown Cinema in Ang Mo Kio. The cinema opened in 1982 and operated for 20 years until the development of nearby multiplexes led to its demise. It ran briefly as a Tamil cinema from 2003, before being converted to an arcade centre and furniture shop. Today, it’s the Djistun Mall.

You might be able to make out the Denny’s 24-hour restaurant in the left of the photo. The American diner chain had a presence in Singapore in the 1980s and 1990s, with a handful of outlets serving breakfast classics like pancakes, eggs and hash browns around the clock. One outlet, in Orchard Towers, was open for 16 years.

The photo (courtesy of National Archives of Singapore) is one of many historic images that feature in the National Heritage Board’s newly refreshed Ang Mo Kio Heritage Trail. Find out more at roots.gov.sg/nhb/trails.

Ghosts on the North East Line

If you want to go looking for scares around Halloween, a cemetery is a good place to start! Woodleigh MRT station is located on land that used to be home to Singapore’s biggest ever graveyard. Bidadari Cemetery operated between 1907 and 1972, at one point having almost 150,000 Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sinhalese burial sites.

The land was first acquired as a farming estate in the 1850s. The name comes from a Malay word for “angel”, and refers to a Danish woman Cecilia Catharina Lange, who married Abu Bakar, the future Sultan of Johor, and became Sultana Zubaidah. Abu Bakar gifted the Bidadari estate to his wife.

In 1902, the property was acquired by Municipal Commissioners, opening as a cemetery a few years later. It eventually covered a large area that’s today bounded by Upper Aljunied Road, Upper Serangoon Road and Bartley Road.

One parcel of land on the edge of the cemetery operated as Alkaff Gardens (or “Happy Garden”) from 1930 to 1964, and was said to be popular as a romantic location for couples.

The last burial at Bidadari Cemetery took place in 1972 on none other than 31 October – yes, Halloween! It was converted to a park and became popular as a jogging route, but was earmarked for development in the late 1990s. Though the Woodleigh MRT station was completed in 2003, it didn’t open for another eight years as there simply wasn’t enough commuter traffic to warrant a stop. It’s in those years that people claim to have seen ghostly figures hanging around the station, especially spirits known as pocong, which appear wrapped in burial cloths. Notable burials at Bidadari

• Regent Alfred John Bidwell – British architect who designed Raffles Hotel
• Lim Boon Keng – Peranakan physician with an MRT named in his honour
• Augustine Podmore Williams – English sailor who inspired Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim
• Gertrude Hodge – Founder of the Malaysian Girl Guide movement
• Sunny Ang – Singaporean law student and convicted murderer

For the record, Woodleigh isn’t the only MRT station considered by some to be haunted! Tampines, Novena, Bishan, Toa Payoh and a couple of others are connected with sightings, too – everything from headless apparitions to a Pontianak, a common ghost in Southeast Asian folklore (and a dead ringer – pardon the pun – for the evil character from The Ring…).

Looking for more Halloween chills? See our feature on Singapore’s spookiest and most haunted places here!

On location in Singapore – a 1967 British film

The 1967 British comedy film Pretty Polly (also known as A Matter of Innocence) was largely set in Singapore, and partly filmed here too. Here’s a quick fact file!

#1 Directed by Guy Green, and based on a novel by Noël Coward, the story concerns Polly Barlow, who leaves England to travel with her wealthy aunt. When the aunt passes away in Singapore, Polly has the opportunity to explore the city – and explore a romance with local tour guide Amaz.

Hayley Mills and Shashi Kapoor play the leads – Kapoor becoming one of the first Indian actors to star as a lead in an international film.

#2 The film begins with a wide shot of Singapore city, with the recognisable dome of City Hall (now the National Gallery), and then a montage that includes the old Cathay theatre, street rickshaws, river traffic near Boat Quay, and a hawker selling fruit.

#3 Filming took place here for six weeks, and the actors were put up in Raffles Hotel.

#4 Noël Coward wasn’t too chuffed with the adaptation. He wrote this in a diary at the time: “I watched, with mounting irritation, the film of Pretty Polly – common, unsubtle and vulgar. Nobody was good in it and Trevor Howard was horrid. Hayley, poor child, did her best, but there was no hope with that script and that director.” Oof!

#5 One of the filming locations was none other than … Bidadari Cemetery (see above!).

The full film is available to watch on YouTube.

50 years of the Singapore Zoo

In 2023, Singapore’s world-class zoo celebrated its golden jubilee – or “Golden ZOObilee” as they called it! The popular park opened on 27 June 1973, and featured 272 animals across 72 species. Today, that number has grown to more than 4,200 animals from over 300 species. Here, we take a look at a couple of the zoo’s more famous residents from its half-century of operations.

Ah Meng

#1 Born in Sumatra around 1960, Ah Meng the orangutan arrived prior to the zoo’s opening after being kept as an illegal pet.

#2 On the day of Deepavali in 1974, Mr Peter Lim became the millionth visitor to the Singapore Zoo; he was greeted by Ah Meng and presented with a brand new Hitachi colour TV set.

#3 By 1986, the iconic orangutan had featured in dozens of travel films and hundreds of articles, meeting the likes of Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and David Copperfield. In 1992, she was given a Special Tourism Ambassador award for her outstanding contributions in promoting the zoo.

#4 The world’s first free-ranging orangutan exhibit opened in 2006, giving Ah Meng and friends a treetop habitat to live in.

#5 Ah Meng passed away in 2008 due to old age – she was approximately 50. Her funeral was attended by 4,000 people. After her death, a 1.5-tonne bronze sculpture was erected in her memory (pictured). Ah Meng’s granddaughter Ishta is a zoo favourite today.

Inuka

#1 In 1990, Inuka was born in Singapore Zoo, becoming the first polar bear born in the tropics. He weighed 250 grams at birth. Inuka’s parents Sheba and Nanook had arrived at the zoo in 1978.

#2 Inuka means “silent stalker” in the Inuit language. It was selected from over 10,000 entries in a naming contest held in 1991.

#3 2013 saw the opening of Inuka’s new home, Frozen Tundra, a 2,700-square-metre exhibit featuring climate-controlled resting areas and an expanded pool for swimming.

#4 Inuka died in 2018 at the age 27; the average life expectancy of bears in the wild is around 15 to 18, and 25 in captivity.

#5 Previously, in 2006, the zoo had made the decision not to bring any more Arctic animals to Singapore, so Inuka’s passing saw the closure of the polar bear attraction at the zoo. Today, there’s a renewed focus instead on tropical wildlife and threatened Southeast Asian species.

Also…

Here are some other famous creatures from Singapore Zoo who made a name for themselves either for their longevity, their character … or their notoriety as escapees!

• Komali the Asian elephant
• Mario the Komodo dragon
• Congo the hippopotamus
• Omar the white tiger
• Matilda the wallaby
• Ramba the chimpanzee
• Astove the tortoise

Find out more at mandai.com/singapore-zoo.

Three Hills – Sophia, Emily and Caroline

A hill rises behind Singapore’s famous Cathay Building on Orchard Road – this is Mount Sophia; behind it, to the north, is Mount Emily. And just nearby is Mount Caroline. As “mountains” go, these three are modest in scope (no more than 40m above sea level), but they loom large in Singapore’s history.

Mount Sophia

Mount Sophia probably acquired its modern name in the 1830s. There is debate around the identity of Sophia, but it may have been Sophia Hull, Sir Stamford Raffles’ second wife. Raffles’ brother-in-law William Flint lived in a house on Mount Sophia.

The land was later owned by Charles Robert Prinsep (as in Prinsep Street), who developed an estate on the slopes, growing mostly nutmeg but also coffee, oranges and cloves. Over time, parts of the estate were sold off, and the area attracted a range of different communities, including Sikh and Jewish families. (The nearby David Elias Building, from 1928, features Stars of David prominently on its façade.) It also became known for its educational and religious institutions.

Mount Sophia was originally called Seligi Hill, which lent its name to Selegie Road in the same area.

Mount Emily

Just to the north of Mount Sophia is Mount Emily, whose land was originally owned by William Farquhar, the first Resident of Singapore (an early term used for the governor). It became part of the later estate of Prinsep, mentioned earlier, who is thought to have named the area after his daughter Amelia (Emily).

A reservoir was built here in 1878 to provide water for the town of Singapore; it did that until 1929, when Fort Canning Reservoir was completed, with a capacity that was 15 times larger. The reservoir on Mount Emily was converted into Singapore’s first public swimming pool.

The pool was hugely popular for many years, with designated shallow and deep ends, diving boards, and enough space for 300 swimmers. It became less used over time, however, and eventually closed in 1981. Today, you can see the Singapore coat of arms on a brick wall in Mount Emily Park, which dates to 1948 and once marked the entrance of the pool complex.

Mount Caroline

Less well known and documented is Mount Caroline, perhaps named after another daughter of Prinsep. It lies just to the west of Mount Emily and Mount Sophia, and is the hill that Government House was built on in 1869 and where the Istana still stands today.

8 things about Matilda House

For over a century, Punggol was an isolated rural corner of Singapore. Even its name has a rustic vibe: it probably comes from a term for lobbing sticks at fruit trees to knock the fruit onto the ground. Because of this remoteness, a number of Europeans in Singapore built country retreats there. Among those retreats was Matilda House, which has an interesting past.

#1 The Cashin family moved from Ireland to Singapore in the mid-1800s, where they made money as lawyers and from then-legal opium farming. Joseph Cashin (1842-1907) is said to have owned 400 shophouses, too. His son Alexander built Matilda House in 1902, naming it after his mother.

#2 The house was considered the prettiest property in Punggol, set in a grove of coconut palms, with a fruit orchard, horse stables and tennis courts, and wonderful views over the Punggol River and the Straits of Johor.

#3 Successive members of the Cashin family occupied the house until 1985, when it was acquired by the government as part of a huge parcel of land slated for development in Punggol.

#4 Though the house was given conservation status in 2000, as the land around it was cleared, it fell into a state of disrepair. The image below dates to 2005, and shows the Punggol LRT in the background, with abandoned Matilda House alone in the foreground. (Photo: Calvin Teo).

#5 It was in this period that the house gained a reputation for being haunted, referred to as “Ghost House” or Istana Menanti (“The Waiting Palace”). Some visitors claim to have seen a white mist in its corridors.

#6 Matilda House has featured on TV, including in British drama series Tenko (1981) and Australian drama series Tanamera – Lion of Singapore (1989).

#7 Today, the house is still in Punggol – but it’s completely unrecognisable. In 2015, it was refurbished and relaunched as the clubhouse of a new condo development, A Treasure Trove. Zoom in on the condo on Google Earth and you can see the distinctive orange roof of the house.

#8 The same family also owned Cashin Pier, a striking sea pavilion that looks out over the Straits of Johor on the western edge of Sungei Buloh Nature Reserve. It’s also still standing today, but is closed for redevelopment as an education centre in Lim Chu Kang Nature Park.

A royal visit to Toa Payoh

The National Heritage Board recently refreshed its Toa Payoh Heritage Trail, which first opened in 2014. Among the interesting stories from the history of Singapore’s “model town” is a famous visit by royalty.

The Heritage Trail highlights Toa Payoh’s significant landmarks, and it includes 29 heritage sites and 10 trail markers. One of those is Block 53, also known as the “VIP Block”. This distinctive Y-shaped HDB block was visited by Queen Elizabeth II on her first state trip to Singapore in 1972.

While she was at the HDB, she visited the Pung family, who invited her into their home and offered her a drink – a glass of 7-Up, no less!

Another resident who was there on the day and who still lives at Block 53 is Madam Tang Mei Fong; she recently shared her personal memories of the experience as a contribution to the refreshed Heritage Trail: “I vividly remember the day Queen Elizabeth II visited our block. We all gathered around our doorways to look out for her arrival. I am very proud that a queen visited, and that Toa Payoh is used as a model for Singapore’s public housing that we show to the world.

Did you know?

Queen Elizabeth would come on two more state visits to Singapore after her 1972 trip – in 1989 and 2006. In 1989, the Queen and Prince Philip visited Kranji War Memorial and also attended a state banquet hosted by Singapore President Wee Kim Wee and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew at the Istana.

In 2006, the Queen went to Kranji once more, but this time to the Singapore Turf Club, where she presented the Queen Elizabeth II Cup to the winner of a race named in her honour; President S R Nathan was in attendance. A meeting with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong followed (at the Fullerton Hotel), and another state banquet at the Istana.

The Queen also returned to Block 53 in 2006, where she once again met with the Pung family. They again offered a drink – water, this time – and it was served in the same glass she had drunk from in 1972!

Goodbye, Golden Mile!

A well-known Singapore building shut its doors in 2023, when the Golden Mile Complex, located on Beach Road just a short walk from Nicoll Highway MRT, was sold en-bloc and handed over to developers.

Built in 1973, the 16-storey structure was an early example of a mixed-used development in Singapore, with shopping, parking, entertainment, offices and apartments all in one. The distinctive terraced or stepped profile of the building allowed for residents to enjoy fantastic ocean views from balconies.

Over time, Golden Mile Complex became known as a centre of the Thai community in Singapore – dubbed “Little Thailand” for its proliferation of Thai restaurants, supermarkets and more. It’s also been a popular meeting spot for retired Singaporeans, who gather each day at its coffee shops to chat.

While the tenants have moved on – some to different malls and food centres – the building itself is living to fight another day. It was gazetted as a conserved building in 2021, which means the structure and façade must be preserved during development.

History of a forbidden spring

Heard of Pancur Larangan? It’s a Javanese-style water feature found on the western slope of Fort Canning Park – and yet another pretty corner of a green space that has loads of them. But there’s a historic relevance to Pancur Larangan, too. The name means “Forbidden Spring”, and it’s believed to have been the location of a bath used by noble ladies from the royal court of the Kingdom of Singapura in the 14th century. (Fort Canning Hill was previously known as Bukit Larangan – Forbidden Hill.) An archaeological dig in 1984 uncovered plenty of ancient Malay and Chinese artefacts in the area.

Today, the recreated water feature – which feels a bit like a mini version of Bali’s Holy Spring – includes a large mural that’s been handcrafted in natural volcanic rock and shows different aspects of society in the settlements of the Fort Canning area from the 14th to 19th centuries. Check it out on your next walk or jog through the park!

A wander in Woodlands

One of 20 or more official heritage trails across the island, the Woodlands Heritage Trail takes in 15 sites, tracing the long and varied history of this part of Singapore’s north.

There are three different themed routes you can follow:

1. Communities of Woodlands: Religious institutions and community landmarks (1.5 hours with public transport, 4km) #
2. Woodlands at War: Former military sites, including Kranji War Cemetery (2 hours with public transport, 9km)
3. A Journey through the Woods: Parks and other green spaces (1.5 hours on bicycle; 2.5 hours on foot with public transport, 15km)

While Woodlands is known as Singapore’s “gateway to Malaysia”, the heritage trail also explores the history of early 19th-century settlers, including Orang Seletar and Teochew migrants, plus the area’s pivotal role in World War II, and the stories of the communities who’ve called Woodlands home ever since.

Did you know?

• Woodlands was originally referred to as “Kranji” or “Mandai”.
• Its newer name comes from a 19th-century bungalow that Edward John Leveson, Italy’s Consul in Singapore, built there as a holiday retreat.
• A railway service to Malaya existed even before the Causeway was built. Once the train reached water, it was carried across the Straits of Johor on a special wagonferry, before continuing north from Johor Bahru.
• Kampong Lorong Fatimah (pictured above) was a Woodlands village built on the water near the Causeway. Residents were relocated to HDBs in the late 1980s.
• Kranji War Cemetery was once the cemetery of a prisoner-of-war camp established by the Japanese in 1942.
• More than 4,400 fallen soldiers are buried at Kranji and more than 24,000 soldiers who died without a grave are named on the Singapore Memorial. Viewed from the air (and visible on Google Earth), the Memorial resembles the silhouette of a World War II warplane.
• Many old places of worship in Woodlands still operate today, including the Church of St Anthony of Padua, Hong Tho Bilw Temple, Masjid An-Nur and Sri Arasakesari Sivan Temple.

Download a map at roots.gov.sg, and view a video of the trail at go.gov.sg/video-woodlandsheritagetrail.

Old photos of Singapore

A recent exhibition at the National Gallery was Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia, a display of over 300 images from the mid-19th century until today, captured by photographers across the region. It included works from Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, but also some interesting old snapshots of Singapore. Here, we take a look at three!

#1 “Harbour View” (late 1890s)

German expat Gustave Richard Lambert set up a successful photographic business here in the 1880s – it would become the leading studio in Southeast Asia. This photo shows Singapore harbour, with Collyer Quay and Cavenagh Bridge in the background.

#2 “Group Photograph of a Chinese Man and Women” (c.1910)

The Lee family hailed from Guangdong in China and set up an extensive photography business in Singapore, including Lee Brothers Studio on Hill Street, near the Armenian Church. It became well known for studio portraits like this one.

#3 “At Rest” (1964)

Wu Peng Seng (1915-2006) was a noted landscape photographer who settled here in 1954, working for a Chinese language newspaper. He became known for his images of scenes of kampongs and the daily life of fishermen.

See more at nationalgallery.sg/livingpictures and @nationalgallerysingapore

Singapore in the 1870s

Nineteenth-century explorer, photographer and writer Isabella Bird was the first woman to be made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. In 1880, she published a book, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, describing her travels in China, Vietnam and other parts of Asia, including Singapore. In this excerpt, she describes a tour from Raffles to Tanglin.

“Let us drive from Raffles Square through this cosmopolitan city and out to Tanglin. Beginning at Cavanagh Bridge, at one end of which stands the Singapore Club and the Post Office, is the ocean Esplanade – the pride of the city – that encloses a public playground of 15 acres, reclaimed from the sea at an expense of over two hundred thousand dollars.

Every afternoon when the heat has fallen from 150 to 80 degrees, the European population meet on this Esplanade park to play tennis, cricket and football, and to promenade, gossip and listen to the music of the regimental band.

The drive from the sea, up Orchard Road to the Botanic Gardens, carries you by all the diversified life of the city. The Chinese restaurant is omnipresent; by its side sits a basket of sugar-cane, each stick two feet long, cleaned and scraped, ready for the hungry and thirsty rickshaw coolies, who have a few quarter cents with which to pander their appetites.

On every veranda and in every shady corner are the Kling and Chinese barbers. The barber is prepared to shave your head, your face, trim your hair, braid your queue, and pull the hairs out of your nose and ears. There is no special quarter for separate trades. Madras tailor shops rub shoulders with Malay blacksmith shops, while Indian wash-houses join Manila cigar manufacturers.

Once past the commercial part of the ride, the great bungalows of the European and Chinese merchants come into view. The immediate borders of the road reveal nothing but a dense mass of tropical verdure and carefully cut hedges, but at intervals there is a wide gap in the hedge, and a road leads off into the seeming jungle. At every such entrance there are posts of masonry, and a plate bearing the name of the manor and its owner.”

The old aquarium

The Singapore Oceanarium (formerly the S.E.A. Aquarium) on Sentosa is among the world’s biggest aquariums, with dozens of habitats, hundreds of species and a whopping 36-metre viewing panel that feels like watching an IMAX screen. But it isn’t Singapore’s first aquarium!

That honour goes to the Van Kleef Aquarium, built in the 1950s on the southern slope of Fort Canning Park (close to Clarke Quay). It was named for a Dutch expat, Karl Willem Benjamin Van Kleef, who in 1930 bequeathed his entire fortune to Singapore – the equivalent of around $10 million today. Several options for how to spend the legacy were considered, but the idea for an aquarium won the day.

After the Second World War delayed the project, the Van Kleef Aquarium opened to the public in 1955 (tickets were about 30 cents). It featured more than 6,000 sea creatures and 180 species, and soon became very popular, with over a quarter of a million visitors in its first year of operation. This rose to 400,000 at its peak in the 1970s. Piranhas and crocodiles were among the main attractions.

Numbers started to decline in the 1980s, and, despite a major renovation in 1986, the aquarium never really found its mojo again. In 1991, the opening of Underwater World on Sentosa led to the closure of the Van Kleef Aquarium, and the building was knocked down in 1996.

Alec Fraser-Brunner, mentioned as the Merlion designer on the previous page, worked as curator of the Van Kleef Aquarium from 1956 to 1970, before moving to Scotland to work at Edinburgh Zoo.

Did you know? This same southwestern corner of Fort Canning Park was the location of two other well-known Singapore landmarks that are no longer standing: the National Theatre (1963-1986), and the River Valley Swimming Complex (1959-2003), where a Tiong Bahru Bakery sits today.

Search for “Van Kleef Aquarium” on YouTube to find old footage of the aquarium.

Little island, big history

We’ve introduced Singapore’s new Heritage Trails in the pages of our magazine before. The 22nd of them to be unveiled was the Sentosa Heritage Trail. The trail takes in 30 heritage sites, and traces Sentosa’s transformation from military complex to leisure destination. There are three different themed routes to follow:

#1 Kampongs and Barracks

Two hours on foot, plus public transport, 3km: Explores the lives of the people of “Blakang Mati” (the island’s Malay name from the 1600s onwards), from the Orang Laut to British Army personnel.

#2 Forts

Two hours on foot, 4km: Looks at the extensive fortifications on Sentosa, including Fort Siloso, Imbiah Battery and Fort Serapong, and how they featured in the defence of Singapore.

#3 Memories of Sentosa

An hour on foot, 2.5km: Revisits some old locations of Sentosa’s reinvention as a leisure destination in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Musical Fountain and the monorail.

The photos from historic Blakang Mati shown here (courtesy of the Sentosa Development Corporation) give an idea of the insights provided by the new trail.

Did you know?

• Half of Blakang Mati was covered by pineapple plantations in the 1800s.
• During the war, a Shinto shrine was erected somewhere on the island (it was likely destroyed by Japanese soldiers in 1945).
• Among the first attractions on Sentosa was The Coralarium (opened 1974), which showcased corals and marine life. It was knocked down to make way for Sentosa Cove.

For more information on all the island’s Heritage Trails, visit roots.gov.sg/nhb/trails.

Fort Siloso gets gazetted

Singapore’s best-preserved 19th-century fort, Fort Siloso, was gazetted as a National Monument in 2022. The timing was just right – not only the 80th anniversary of the Fall of Singapore, but also 50 years since Sentosa opened as a destination for tourists.

Fact File

• This is Singapore’s 74th National Monument.
• The previous structures to be gazetted were three of the bridges along the Quays – Anderson, Elgin and Cavenagh – in October 2019.
• The National Monument programme launched in 1973, when the first batch of nine buildings and structures were recognised, including Lau Pa Sat food centre, Sri Mariamman Temple in Chinatown, Saint Andrew’s Cathedral, and the Old Thong Chai Medical Institution, where traditional Chinese doctors dispensed free medicines in the late 19th century.
• Other famous entries in the list of monuments (which now numbers 77) include Raffles Hotel, CHIJMES, The Istana, and the old entrance gate, turret and wall of Changi Prison.

About Siloso

• The fort is made up of 11 structures that help to tell Singapore’s military and defence story.
• It was built in 1878; the top section of Mount Siloso was demolished at the time to provide a platform for the military installation.
• The design of the fort was unique in that its guns were placed not in a geometric or aesthetic way, but for strategic firing in different directions; this is why there is a random kind of feel to the layout of the site.

• The old story goes that during the Battle of Singapore in 1942, the guns of Siloso were “pointed the wrong way”; that’s why the Japanese could easily advance from the north. In fact, several of the guns did rotate 360 degrees, and they did indeed fire to the north. The bigger problem was that they used armour-piercing shells designed for ships, and weren’t accurate enough to use effectively against ground troops.
• Today, you can see all kinds of WWII relics on the site, from cannons to tunnels, and visit the Surrender Chambers to see an interactive video documentary with wax models of Japanese and British troops; there’s also a Skywalk trail with a great aerial view of the site.
• The fort likely gets its name from the Malay word for “rock”, though another origin is said to be the Spanish/Tagalog word for “jealous”.

Half a century ago on Orchard

For Singapore shopaholics, 1972 was a good year, with a number of new retail locations and concepts unveiled – including this one on Orchard Road.

Specialists’ Shopping Centre

Opened on the spot previously occupied by one of Singapore’s leading picture theatres, the Pavilion, Specialists’ Shopping Centre took its name from the many medical services found there in its early days. But it soon developed into a popular retail hub, thanks largely to the presence of a John Little outlet. John Little was Singapore’s oldest department store chain – it first started trading all the way back in 1842, founded by an 18-year-old Scotsman, John Martin Little. (The last John Little store in Singapore closed in 2016, bringing a 174-year chapter to an end.)

Specialists’ sat alongside the Hotel Phoenix, which also opened in 1972. The 400-room hotel was an early adopter of the electronic key-card for room access; it also introduced a new computerised lift system that allowed lifts to stop at different floors when not being used, to minimise waiting times.

Both the shopping centre and the Phoenix were demolished in 2007/2008. You’ll now find 313@Somerset, Orchard Central and JEN Singapore Orchardgateway in the same location, keeping the retail and hotel vibe going.

1972 also saw the launch of the first OG department store, with the 10-storey OG Building opening at People’s Park in Chinatown. There are still three OG outlets today – the initials stand for “Ocean Garments”, which was the original name of the family-run fashion business from the 1960s.

Who was Whampoa?

Today, Whampoa is a housing area in Balestier – you’ve probably passed through it, or at least heard the name. That name comes from a leading Chinese businessman of the 19th century, Hoo Ah Kay (1816- 1880), better known as “Whampoa” after his birthplace of Huangpu in China’s Guangdong Province.

After arriving in Singapore as a teenager, Whampoa went on to become fluent in English and serve on Singapore’s Executive Legislative Council; he was also involved in the Tan Tock Seng Hospital. His company, Whampoa & Co, worked mainly in shipping and provisions. One of its innovations was to import blocks of ice from America’s frozen lakes. (Whampoa’s ice factory was located where the G-Max Reverse Bungy recently operated at Clarke Quay! The Victorian-style building with wrought-iron balustrades was torn down in 1981.)

Whampoa’s gardens

He was also known for his grand home, which occupied a large tract of land on the site of today’s Boon Keng MRT Station. In particular, Whampoa’s amazing gardens attracted travellers from near and far.

One of these was American author and travel writer Frank Vincent, who wrote the following passage in his travel memoir, The Land of the White Elephant (1882):

“In the afternoon, we go by road to the house and gardens of the Honourable Mr Whampoa, a Chinese merchant who has settled for life at Singapore, where he has been for a long time in business, and is reported to have made a fortune of $2,000,000. Mr Whampoa is a well-educated gentleman, speaks English perfectly, and is a member of the town council. His house, three miles from the town, is a complete museum, filled with expensive and beautiful curios from all countries, while his gardens – he is a great lover of flowers – are one of the first things a stranger is asked by European residents of Singapore: ‘Have you see the Chinaman’s gardens? If not, be sure and do so before leaving’.

“These gardens are rather a work of art than nature, with shrubs tortured into the most fantastic shapes by means of clipping and confining with wires. One may see living dogs, dragons, fish and exactly formed boats, pagodas and baskets. Walking along, we saw fish ponds, summer houses, canals, hedges, a network of paths, neatly gravelled, and then we came to the pig-sty, a long shed in which immense pigs of different breeds were wallowing; one hog – nearly the size of a cow – being too fat to stand upon its feet.”

Ten years later, another 19th-century writer, Reverend George Murray Reith, wrote the following description in his Handbook to Singapore:

“For many years, the private gardens of Mr Whampoa, a Chinese gentleman, have been considered one of the chief sights of Singapore. By the courtesy of the proprietor, the public are freely admitted to the gardens, which are very beautifully laid out and well worth a visit. They are in Serangoon Road (right-hand side), two miles from town”

“Whampoa, Singapore” (above) is an old illustration by Russian traveller Aleksei Vysheslavtsev, who was another visitor to the gardens, in the 1860s; his sketch presumably shows the area where the Whampoa River opens into Kallang.

Flashback – a solo traveller

Lilian Leland was just 25 when she set out from New York in 1884 to travel the globe and write. Her subsequent book, Traveling Alone: A Woman’s Journey Around the World (1890) recounts adventures in a wide range of destinations: from Chile and Hawaii, to Egypt, Japan, Turkey, India … and Singapore.

One critic said: “Leland was not eager to immortalise her name by attempting to add one more to the long list of tedious guide books, but wrote in a delightfully free and offhand fashion.”

This off-hand approach is evident from her very first sentence about Singapore: “It requires a stretch of the imagination to believe it is in fact November, for the temperature here is suggestive of ovens.”

She then follows up with this line about the local fauna: “I haven’t observed any sociable cobras or boa constrictors in my hotel room yet, but, as the Irishman said, ‘I have great hopes.’”

More interesting, perhaps, is her account of how she was treated at Singapore’s Hotel D’Europe, where clearly the staff hadn’t seen too many solo women travellers in their time…

“Dear me, what a dreadful thing it is to be a woman and to travel alone! I have thrown the hotel quite into a commotion. The unhappy clerk is in a pitiable state. He comes to my room and closes a shutter of my window that somebody in an adjacent room might possibly look through by partially dislocating his neck, and explains apologetically that there is so much curiosity and they ask him so many questions.

He also inquires doubtfully what my business is and I reply by way of reassuring him that I travel for my health, and to write. The table is at the time strewn with my manuscript, so the reply is eminently satisfactory.

He thinks that I ought to feel strange and frightened at being alone in a hotel, so he escorts me upstairs and downstairs to the table and back again. What a shocking sinful thing a woman is, to be whisked away and tucked into a back room, out of sight. I ought evidently to blush for my womanhood. But I don’t. On the contrary, I glory in it. I have come so far in comfort and safety, and I feel every day more confidence in myself and the innate goodness of human nature”

You can read more of the book online at Google Books – just search for “Lilian Leland”.

Singapore’s first phones

When was the first phone call made in Singapore? Possibly 142 years ago, in 1879. That was the year when Bennett Pell (1842- 1912), local manager of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, set up an exchange on the island. Singapore became known as the first city in the East to have a telephone system. (Alexander Graham Bell had only patented his new invention three years earlier, in 1876!) One of the very early connections was made between Raffles Square and Tanjong Pagar.

Despite this, it would be another 58 years before Singapore’s phone network went international, when a call to London was connected on 1 December 1937.

The first public coin-operated phone probably appeared in Singapore in the 1950s; by the early 1960s there were 250 of these, rising rapidly to 650 by 1965. (remembersingapore.org) The switch from coins to cards happened in the mid-1980s, in part to avoid the problem of people stealing coins from the boxes.

As mobile phones came into vogue, pay phones began to be phased out. And, with mobile phone penetration currently at around 150 percent of the population (that is, every person owns one and a half phones!), you’ll likely see fewer and fewer of them.

Did you know?

Singapore phone numbers had just five digits in the 1950s; an extra digit was added in the 1960s, and then seven digits became the norm in the 1980s. The eight-digit numbers we know today were introduced in 1995 for mobile phones and pagers (with the addition of a “9” at the front) and in 2002 for land lines (with the addition of a “6”).

Singapore travel – the old route from South to North

If you’re making the trip from Boat Quay to the Woodlands Checkpoint these days, it’ll take around 30 minutes, zipping along the AYE, PIE or CTE. But what about 130 years ago?

Reverend George Murray Reith (1863-1948) was a Scottish minister of Singapore’s local Presbyterian church (plus a member of the Straits Philosophical Society and the Raffles Library), and a keen traveller on the side. He wrote one of the earliest guidebooks to the island, Handbook to Singapore, published in 1892. Below is his account of the half-day journey to Johor (“Johore”).

From the Wharves to Kranji via Singapore Town, and thence to Johore Bahru.

“If the traveller has ten to twelve hours to spare, he cannot do better than cross the island to Kranji, and thence pass over to the kingdom of Johore on the mainland; for he passes through the town of Singapore en route, and also has the opportunity of seeing the general appearance of the coffee, gambier and pepper plantations, and of the jungle in the interior of the island.

A carriage and horses for this excursion can be hired from one of the Livery Stables. From the Christian Cemetery, instead of turning into Thompson Road, the traveller keeps his course along the Bukit Timah Road, on which, seven miles out, he passes the hill that gives its name to the road: Bukit Timah or ‘Hill of Tin’, the highest point in the island (height 519 feet).

The ascent of this hill is made by carriage or on foot. There is a Government Bungalow on the summit, to which residents go occasionally for a change of air. There are two Mission Chapels in the Bukit Timah district, for Chinese converts. One belongs to the English Presbyterian Mission; the other, the Chapel of St. Joseph, to the French Catholic Mission. From Bukit Timah to Kranji, the road winds through plantations and jungle for seven miles. At the village of Kranji there is a small pier whence Chinese and Malay sampans transport passengers across the Strait to Johore.

The Johore Strait (Silat Terbau), varying from three quarters of a mile to two miles in breadth and thickly wooded on both sides to the water’s edge, charms the visitor with beauties that are peculiar to land and water scenery; the ever-changing light and shade throw the landscape into combinations of colour as pleasing as they are varied. Travellers have compared it favourably with the Rhine scenery, with Loch Lomond, and with the best views on the estuaries of the Forth and the Tay.

Johore Bahru (‘New Johore’), the capital of the dominions of the Sultan of Johor and Muar, is a town with a population of 20,000. The chief place of interest is the Istana, or palace, which faces the Strait. It has been tastefully furnished in the European style by the present Sultan, who is a staunch ally of the British Government.”

Neighbourhoods – Amber Road

It’s interesting what you find when you dig into the past. In one of our recent Street Talk columns in our print magazine, we chatted to a family who lived in Amber Gardens. When we took a casual look in the books to see if it had any historical significance, we quickly discovered it does!

Located in Tanjong Katong, Amber Gardens runs perpendicular to the L-shaped Amber Road, at the western end of Marine Parade Road. It was built exactly a century ago this year. The word “Amber” appears in various placenames in the neighbourhood and elsewhere in Singapore from that time, and while its direct origin is unknown, it’s almost certainly connected to the family of Joseph (“Joe”) Aaron Elias (1881-1949). (His mother was sometimes referred to as Mrs Sarina Elias Amber.)

According to Singapore Infopedia, Elias was a prominent Jewish businessman of the day; he owned one of Singapore’s first shopping centres, Amber Mansions. It was located near where Dhoby Ghaut MRT is today, and was demolished in 1984.

The area around Amber Road was also the site of an earlier Malay kampong, Kampong Amber, which was active in the 1940s and 1950s, and known for the multiculturalism of its Chinese, Indian and Malay villagers.

Another piece of trivia: Mandalay Villa was a prominent house on Amber Road, and apparently the place where Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew proposed to his wife, Kwa Geok Choo!

The Chinese Swimming Club, which is still on Amber Road today, was launched in 1905 as a swimming group for Straits Chinese who couldn’t join the Singapore Swimming Club set up for European members by the British. Some superb swimmers launched their careers at the club, including Patricia Chan, Singapore’s flag bearer at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and Mark Chay, who swam at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics (and who was recently appointed a new Nominated Member of Parliament.

All of these mini features on Singapore history first appeared in Expat Living magazine. You can buy the latest issue or subscribe so you never miss a copy!

For more interesting facts and trivia about Singapore, see our Things To Do section.

 

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