Described in its early days as an area of picturesque loveliness, MacRitchie Reservoir and its surroundings, remains today an area in Singapore to find an escape in. Singapore’s first impounding reservoir, MacRitchie was first created by the building of a dam from 1864 to 1868, and has been enlarged twice to the size it is today. The reservoir is today set on the fringe of a secondary forest – now is part of the Central Catchment Reserve, that if not for the reservoir being there, might be with us today.
An article in the 22 May 1869 edition of the Straits Times describes the reservoir:
“Probably within the radius of double its (the reservoir’s) distance from town, there exists no point in the island possessing the same charms of placid loveliness that the abortive reservoir offers to the view of the excursionist”.
The same article also describes the existence of the many “Malayan hamlets” that had existed when “pioneers of the work first intruded upon the solitude of the valley”, going on to describe how the fruit trees that had been left behind under “the shadow of the great primeval forest” has lent “an interest to the spot beyond the picturesque loveliness which the artificial lake has produced”.
The reservoir, once known as Thomson Road Reservoir, was named after James MacRitchie, a municipal engineer who had overseen the second expansion of the the reservoir in 1891. That expansion was to increase the reservoir’s holding capacity from what was an equivalent of 50 days supply to a capacity which held 200 days of supply.
The much travelled Mr MacRitchie – he had taken up several appointments including ones that took him to Calcutta, Japan and South America, who had arrived in Singapore in late 1883; had an illustrious career in Singapore as the colony’s Municipal Engineer, before his untimely passing in 1895 at the age of 47.
Besides the waterworks and the improvement of its supply lines that included the laying of pipelines and the construction of filter beds , one group of which is located at the corner of Cavenagh Road and Bukit Timah Road, Mr MacRitchie was also responsible for overseeing several civil works, the most notable of which are the building of a number of bridges and several markets. These included some that were to become well-known landmarks such as the 1886 Coleman Bridge (dismantled in the late 1980s), the Read Bridge, the Pulau Saigon Bridge (dismantled in 1986) and the Telok Ayer Market (Lau Pa Sat).
The Long and Winding Road 
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