Bukit Timah Heritage Trail
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The Bukit Timah Heritage Trail is part of the National Heritage Board’s ongoing efforts to document and present the history and social BUKITBUKIT TIMAHTIMAH memories of places in Singapore. We hope this trail will bring back fond memories for those who have worked, lived or played in the area, and HERITAGEHERITAGE TRAILTRAIL serve as a useful source of information for visitors and new residents. A COMPANIONCOMPANION GGUIDEUIDE Supported by A road leading up to Bukit Timah Hill, 1890s Upper Bukit Timah Road, 1982 National Museum of Singapore, Courtesy of National Heritage Board From the Lee Kip Lin Collection. All rights reserved. Lee Kip Lin and National Library Board, Singapore 2016 2 3 CONTENTS Introduction p.2 The Chinese High School (now Hwa Chong Institution) Early History p.3 Former Raffl es College Settlement and early land-use (now National University of Singapore Bukit Timah Campus) Bukit Timah Road and early colonial explorations Ngee Ann Polytechnic The railway in Bukit Timah Nanyang Girls’ High School National Junior College Natural Heritage p.10 Methodist Girls’ School History of the Bukit Timah St Margaret’s Secondary School Nature Reserve Raffl es Girls’ Primary School Flora and fauna of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve Industry p.57 Wallace in Bukit Timah Dairy Farm Nature Park Singapore Botanic Gardens Factories Hindhede Nature Park Transport Quarries Community p.25 Kampongs in Bukit Timah Leisure p.63 Fuyong Estate Swiss Club Former Bukit Timah Fire Station Former Racecourse at Bukit Timah Bukit Timah in World War II p.32 Former Beauty World Former Command House Coronation Plaza Adam Park and Sime Road Serene Centre and The British surrender and the Cluny Court Former Ford Factory Adam Food Centre Cheong Chin Nam Road, Burial Grounds and p.39 Chun Tin Road, Yuk Tong Avenue Sacred Spaces and Tham Soong Avenue St Joseph’s Church Bibliography p.75 Masjid Al-Huda Hoon San Temple Credits p.77 Fong Yun Thai Association Columbarium Suggested Short Trail Routes p.78 Bukit Brown Heritage Sites in the Suggested p.80 Educational Institutions p.46 Short Trail Routes Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School Heritage Trail Map p.81 2 3 INTRODUCTION EARLY HISTORY n Malay, Bukit Timah means “Tin Hill”, even to set up gambier and pepper plantations. By though tin was never discovered in the area. 1827, some three-quarters of the route from IIt is possible that the hill was actually called town to Bukit Timah had been cleared of Bukit Temak by locals in reference to the primary rainforest by these settlers. Temak trees that grew in the area, with the name being altered when it was subsequently Operating before Singapore’s early road transliterated into English. network was laid out, it is likely that these cultivators transported their commodities on While it is unclear which tree species the Malay pukats (“canoes” in Malay) along the rivers name Temak refers to, the Shorea curtisii is a and coasts. Many of these pioneers toiled on likely candidate. Abundant in the Bukit Timah small-scale plantations, and were able to eke Nature Reserve, these lowland rainforest trees out only a subsistence living. are also known as Seraya. Other renditions of this area’s place-name include “Bukit Tima” or Most of these planters worked the land “Bukit Teemar”, both of which are commonly without legal title, a practice which refl ected found in early British maps from the 1800s. the inability of the British government to exercise its full authority over areas outside SETTLEMENT AND EARLY LAND-USE of the town. Writing in his diary in 1839, Sir Historical scholarship has yet to uncover any James Brooke, a British naval offi cer who settlements in Bukit Timah before the arrival of later became Rajah of Sarawak, described the Bukit Timah, 2016 the British in 1819, although it is possible that plantations and villages around Bukit Timah in Courtesy of National Heritage Board coastal and riverine-dwelling locals may have this way: visited the area’s forests in search of agarwood for incense, timber, herbs and food. “The most interesting class of Chinese are ost Singaporeans today would Railway. There are also many schools in this the squatters in the jungle around the high associate Bukit Timah with its area such as the former Raffl es College (now During the early years of colonial Singapore, hill of Bukit Timah. Their habitations may Meponymous hill or the Bukit Timah the National University of Singapore) and the municipal government was located be distinguished like clear specks amidst the Nature Reserve. While the area’s natural primarily in the town area around the National Junior College which possess long and woods, and from each a wreath of smoke heritage no doubt defi nes Bukit Timah in the Singapore River. The island’s outlying districts illustrious histories, and have played important arises, the inmates being constantly engaged public consciousness, there is nevertheless and interior, including Bukit Timah, were roles in the development of Singapore. in the boiling of gambier. We may estimate much more to this area than the lush greenery largely covered with forests and swamps, at nearly 2,000 of these people who, straying that meets the eye. Through the Bukit Timah Heritage Trail, and were unexplored by Europeans. As the from the fold of civilisation, become wild and you can learn more about the area’s history, Singapore Chronicle newspaper described the Older generations of Singaporeans may lawless on its very confines. The nature of the beginning from the early 1800s when early area in 1825: remember the idyllic villages of Kampong country renders [British] control difficult, if settlers established plantations, to the nascent Tempe, Kampong Chantek, Kampong “Bukit Tima [sic], although not above seven or not impossible, so that they may be said to live development of former industries in the Racecourse and Bukit Timah Village. Some, on eight miles from the town of Singapore, has never beyond the reach of all [colonial] law ....” 1950s and fi nally to the emergence of well- the other hand, may recall the valiant battles been visited by an European – seldom by a native, fought in Bukit Timah just days before the fall loved places such as Adam Food Centre and and such is the character of the intervening The plantation owners and workers often lived of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Coronation Plaza in later decades. country, that it would be almost as easy to make a in or near bangsals, a Malay term referring to voyage to Calcutta as to travel to it.” shed-like structures which were often used Yet, there are others who associate Bukit This trail booklet shares not only the above- more broadly to indicate a plantation, as well Timah with the vibrancy of the Beauty World mentioned history of this area, but also the While the island’s interior was largely as its processing areas and accommodations. entertainment and shopping area, or trips personal memories of those who have lived, unfamiliar to Europeans in the early 1800s, The bangsals were the predecessors of across the Causeway via the Singapore-Johor worked and played here. Chinese planters had already ventured inland kampongs (“villages” in Malay). 4 5 With a signifi cant population of plantation “One morning 600 Chinese passed our house BUKIT TIMAH ROAD AND These convicts, most of whom were brought workers inland and around the northern in straggling single fi le, armed, in the most EARLY COLONIAL EXPLORATIONS to Singapore from the Indian subcontinent, coast by the 1840s, Christian missionaries impromptu manner, with guns, matchlocks, For the colonial government, the fi rst steps were also responsible for clearing forested established churches and mission stations to pikes, swords, huge three-pronged fi shing spears, towards regulating Singapore’s rural interior areas as well as hunting down tigers. proselytise and convert the Chinese in these knives, hatchets and long sharpened stakes of involved increasing access to and expanding areas. A number of these institutions are still hard wood. They were going to buy rice, they said, their knowledge of these outlying districts. In Under the supervision of colonial surveyor around today, including St Joseph’s Church but they were stopped on the road by a party of 1827, the colonial administrator John Prince John Turnbull Thomson, Bukit Timah Road and Glory Presbyterian Church. about a dozen Malay police, fi ve of them shot, and explored the route to the summit of Bukit was later extended further northwards to the rest turned back.” Timah Hill in preparation for the construction Kranji, with the road meeting the crossing to From the 1830s, gambier planting became of a road that would enable access into the Johor by 1845. In that year, the road was fi rst highly profi table due to an increased demand In the face of these socio-economic upheavals, northern part of Singapore, hitherto largely traversed in its entirety by Thomson and the for the crop from the tanning and dyeing many gambier planters relocated to Johor in unexplored by Europeans. medical doctor and coroner Dr Robert Little. industries in Europe and elsewhere. However, search of fresh land to cultivate. Eventually, Having returned from a trip up the Skudai this gambier boom also brought a number the gambier industry in Singapore became less Proceeding from town and accompanied by a River in Johor, the duo made the journey on contractor for the road, Prince’s journey took of social and economic confl icts to the fore, profi table and by the end of the 19th century, horseback from Kranji to town via the newly resulting in widespread communal violence in gambier and pepper plantations had mostly fi ve hours on foot.