Breaking KD Malaya’s last ship up

For those whose connection with Singapore’s far north go back to the 20th century, the road to the causeway was one littered with an interesting range of sights. One such sight that would certainly have caught the eye, was that of KD Malaya, a camp from which Malaysia’s navy – Tentera Laut DiRaja Malaysia (TLDM) or Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) had its fleet based at until 1979, and which was used as a TLDM training facility right until 1997.

KD Malaya from Admiralty Road West – the layout of the buildings gave an appearance of the bow of a huge ship.

The centrepiece of the base was it large parade ground, beyond which an administrative building and two barrack buildings took on the appearance of the bow of a huge ship with the camp’s flagstaff seemingly a foremast. This was quite a remarkable sight, as one came around an area of Admiralty Road West that contained Hawkins Road refugee camp and View Road Hospital (the area was featured in Secrets in the Hood Episode 5).

The former KD Malaya, seen in 2020 after Admiralty West Prison vacated it.

The wondrous sight of the former KD Malaya is now one has quite sadly been lost to the frenzy of redevelopment has now reached Singapore’s once sleepy north, with the Woodlands North Coast development beginning to take shape. While the camp’s streamline moderne inspired former administration block may have been kept for posterity, the two barrack buildings that contributed to the sight has since been demolished. Along with that, the parade square, which had provided the setback to take the wonderful view in, has also been consigned to history. This breaking of a link with our shared history with Malaysia, through the removal of a significant physical reminder of it seems especially ironic with the development nearby of a new link to Malaysia through the Rapid Transit System.

Only the administration block remains today (with a granite-faced staircase leading up to it).

I shall miss the sight of the former KD Malaya, with which I have been familiar with since my childhood. Together with the wonderful spaces and landmarks in and around it, it has provided great joy and comfort, especially with much of the rest of a Singapore being transformed in a way made it hard to identify with. While KD Malaya’s administration block is being kept, my fear is that it becomes just another building in a space overcrowded with a clutter of structures of a brave new world – as seems the case many other developments in which heritage structures are present. An example is the transformation of the joyously green space around old Admiralty House into the monstrous Bukit Canberra development into which a ridiculous amount of concrete has been poured in and around which a clutter of structures has conspired to reduce the presence of the stately arts and crafts movement inspired old Admiralty House.

A road is being built around the site.

There is also the matter of KD Malaya’s gateposts, which will have to be relocated. Whatever happens to it and wherever it will eventually be re-sited, my hope is that it doesn’t go the way of the old National Library’s gateposts. Originally left in situ to mark the site of a much loved Singaporean building, the gateposts have since suffered the indignity of being displaced and put in a position in which it has become …. just another part of the scene.

KD Malaya’s old gate.

The road to perdition. Work on the Rapid Transit System is taking place, which will cross over that body of water that is seen to Johor Bahru.

Will the former Rimau Offices / View Road Hospital (and its unusual above ground “bomb-proof” office) be the next to go?

Advertisement

Discovering Old Changi Hospital (2019)

Update : Registration has closed as of 7.06 pm 1 July 2019. As pre-registration is required, no walk-ins will be permitted. 

More on the series: Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets

---

The disused buildings of the former Changi Hospital have, since the hospital’s colsure in 1997, been the subject of persistent rumours that stem from a misunderstanding of the buildings’ wartime history.

The hospital, which began its life as RAF Hospital, Changi, was among the most highly regarded in the RAF medical service. It boasted of some of the best facilities, and the environment it provided was ideally suited to rest and recuperation. Occupying buildings of the Changi garrison that were perhaps the least troubled by the occurences in Changi from Feb 1942 and Aug 1945, it was only in 1947 that the hospital was set up. Two Royal Engineers’ Kitchener Barracks buildings built in the 1930s were turned into the hospital to serve RAF Changi after the air station was established (in 1946). A third block, which became the main ward block, was added in the early 1960s.

Suported by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the visit provides an opportunity to learn more about the former hopsital and its misunderstood past. It will also offer participants a rare opportunity to take a guided walk through parts of the property.

When 
13 July 2019

How to register

Do note that spaces are limited. As this is a repeat visit, kindly register only if you have not previously participated.

Participants must be of ages 18 and above.

A unique registration is required for each participant – duplicate registrations in the same name will count as one.

Registration shall be made using the form at this link (closed as of 7.06 pm 1 July 2019).

A confirmation will be sent to the email address used in registration one week prior to the visit with admin instructions to all successful registrants. Please ensure that the address entered on the form is correct.

---

Discovering 5 Kadayanallur Street (2019)

COMPLETED

The 2019 edition of Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets, a series of State Property Visits that has been organised with the support of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) starts this June with a revisit to No. 5 Kadayanallur Street.

Two(2) sessions are being held on 22 June 2019 (a Saturday), each lasting 45 minutes.

Each session is limited to 25 participants.

Participants must be of ages 18 and above.

Registration is necessary. Do note that registration for both sessions closed at 6.50 pm on 10 June 2019. 

Updates (info only) on the 2019 series will also be provided at this link and on The Long and Winding Road on Facebook.

---

---

More information:

• The hospital at Mount Erskine and what may now be Singapore’s oldest lift
• Photos (on Flickr)
• Story of a lift nearing 90 (Sunday Times, 27 May 2018)

Discovering Keys’ Dutch-gabled houses

Next in the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of guided State Property visits brings us to two delightful houses (one of which will be opened) designed by Major P. H. Keys.

Major Keys would be best known as the architect of the Fullerton Building, which turned 100 in June of this year.

The visit, which is supported by the Singapore Land Authority, will take place on Saturday 1 September 2018. Two sessions will be held from 10 – 10.45 am and from 11 – 11.45 am.

---

Registration (kindly register for only one session) :  

Participants need to be of ages 18 and above. Do also note that unique registrations are required and duplicate registrations shall be counted as a single registration.

[Registration has closed as of 17 Aug at 12.09 pm as all slots have been taken up]

Click here to register for Session 1 (10 to 10.45 am)

Click here to register for Session 2 (11 to 11.45 am)

---

More on the houses:

• A Dutch flavoured corner in the former Chasseriau Estate
• The Sunday Times 27 May 2018 (at the end of this Premium article: Story of a lift nearing 90)

---

More on Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets:

• On SG Magazine 5 July 2018
• 11 Best Tours of Singapore – TimeOut Singapore 11 Apr 2018
• 5 Guided Walking Trails To Discover Previously Inaccessible Corners Of Singapore – TheSmartLocal 28 Nov 2017
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets – LAND Sep 2017
• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore – The Straits Times 23 Jul 2017

---

 

Discovering 10 Hyderabad Road

Update (20 Jul 2018, 12.30 pm)

Registration has closed as all 40 slots have been taken up. Do look out for the next visit in the series – registration will open on a Friday two weeks before the visit date.  More information at Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets is back.

---

The third visit in the 2018 “Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets” series of State Property Visits, which the Singapore Land Authority is supporting, is to No. 10 Hyderabad Road. The property, which is now wonderfully repurposed as the Singapore campus of the S P Jain School of Global Management (who are also hosting and supporting the visit), features a set of buildings that may seem vaguely familiar to some. The buildings, the oldest on the campus, feature tropicalised classical façades and can be found replicated across several former British military camps across Singapore dating back to the 1930s. Built as officers’ messes as part of the wave of military barracks upgrading and construction works of the era, this one at Hyderabad Road was put up for the same purpose by the officers of Gillman Barracks.

The British military pull-out in 1971 saw the building handed over to the Singapore government. The Dental Health Education Unit moved in in 1973 and then the Institute of Dental Health (IDH) – when the Dental Education Unit was incorporated into it in 1975. It was during this time that the campus’ six-storey learning centre and hostel was put up for use as a central facility for the training of dental therapists, nurses, dental assistants and technicians. Outpatient dental health clinics were also set up in the building.

The buildings of the former officers’ mess is now used by S P Jain as an administration building as well as as “hotel” for visiting faculty and features 20 very comfortable rooms as well as a beautifully decorated lounge and banquet hall.  There are also staff rooms, discussion rooms, a music room, a chill-out lounge and a library in the buildings – which participants can hope to see.

---

Details of the visit and registration link:

Location	:	10 Hyderabad Road, Singapore 119579
Date	:	4 August 2018
Time	:	10 to 11.45 am
Registration	:	https://goo.gl/forms/goZZravHJk4hDrnx1

Back to Top

---

More on 10 Hyderabad Road:

• The beautiful campus at Hyderabad Road
• Singapore Campus, S P Jain School of Global Management

More on Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets:

• On SG Magazine 5 July 2018
• 11 Best Tours of Singapore – TimeOut Singapore 11 Apr 2018
• 5 Guided Walking Trails To Discover Previously Inaccessible Corners Of Singapore – TheSmartLocal 28 Nov 2017
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets – LAND Sep 2017
• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore – The Straits Times 23 Jul 2017

---

Discovering 5 Kadayanallur Street

Next on the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of State Property Visits, being organised with the support of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), is to No. 5 Kadayanallur Street on 7 July 2018. The visit is limited to 40 participants of ages 18 and above. Registration (limited to 40 participants of ages 18 and above) may be made by filling the form at this link (fully subscribed as of 1707 hrs 22 Jun 2018).

More information:

• The hospital at Mount Erskine and what may now be Singapore’s oldest lift
• Photos (on Flickr)
• Story of a lift nearing 90 (Sunday Times, 27 May 2018)

The hospital at Mount Erskine and what may now be Singapore’s oldest lift

Rather nondescript in appearance, the building at 5 Kadayanallur Street conceals a wealth of little secrets. Last used as the corporate offices of a department store in Singapore, there are few who know of the building’s chequered past and of its use as a hospital before and during the Japanese Occupation. Another interesting piece of history that the building holds is an old lift. Installed in 1929, the Smith, Major and Stevens beauty – complete with wooden panels and sets of collapsible gates – may be the oldest lift now in existence in Singapore.

The rather nondescript looking building at Kadayanallur Street – last used as CK Tang’s Coporate Offices.

The building, which has been described as Singapore’s first modernist building, was completed in 1923 as the St. Andrew’s Mission Hospital (for Women and Children). Designed by Swan and Maclaren’s Harry Robinson, the odd shape of its plan can be attributed to the site that was found to accommodate what would have been a small but very important institution. The first dedicated facility that the St. Andrew’s Mission set up – it had previously run several dispensaries, including one at Upper Cross Street with a small in-patient section – it was established to provide impoverished residents with illnesses living in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of Chinatown with access to care and relief from suffering.

The inside of the building – the floor where the hospital’s staff quarters were located.

The installation of a lift – retrofitted in 1929 – was considered then to be a step forward in the treatment of children afflicted with a rare, debilitating and extremely painful tuberculosis of the bones and joints. The disease was first recorded in 1923 – the year of the hospital’s opening and in 1926, six children were hospitalised for it. The only opportunity that could be afforded for these patients to gain access to sunlight and fresh air, essential to treatment, was the roof of the building. This – due to movement of the affected limbs of the children being “painful and injurious” – would not have been possible without a lift.

The 1929 vintage Smith, Major and Stevens lift, which I believe may be the oldest now in Singapore, is still – if not for the shut-off of electrical supply – in working condition.

The hospital building was evacuated in December 1941 following an air raid and was never to be used by the mission again. The Japanese ran a civilian hospital for women and children, the Shimin Byoin, in it from April 1942. After the war, the building was used as a medical store. The Mission was only able to reopen the women and children’s hospital in January 1949 after it was able to acquire and refit the former Globe Building at Tanjong Pagar Road (some may remember the SATA Clinic there). More recently, the Kadayanallur Street building (incidentally Kadayanallur Street was only named in 1952 – after the Singapore Kadayanallur Muslim League) was also used as the Maxwell Road Outpatient Dispensary (from 1964 to 1998).

The roof deck that featured in the treatment of children with tuberculosis of the bones and joints.

A rare opportunity may be provided by the Singapore Land Authority to visit the building and also see the lift, through the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of guided State Property Visits, possibly sometime in July. The visit will also give participants an opportunity to discover much more on the building and the area and also of the building’s history. Do look out for further information on the visit and how and when to register on this site and also at The Long and Winding Road on Facebook.

More photographs : on Flickr.

See also: Story of a lift nearing 90 (Sunday Times, 27 May 2018)

---

Further information about Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets:

• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets – LAND Sep 2017
• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore – The Straits Times 23 Jul 2017
• 11 Best Tours of Singapore – TimeOut Singapore 11 Apr 2018
• 5 Guided Walking Trails To Discover Previously Inaccessible Corners Of Singapore – TheSmartLocal 28 Nov 2017

---

 

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets is back

Information on the series can be found at this link.

Do note that there are no further tours to Old Changi Hospital planned.

The idea behind these tours is to permit members of the public to gain access to the otherwise restricted sites to allow history and also alter misconceptions many may have about the sites such as Old Changi Hospital.

Contrary to popular belief, the site – originally part of the Royal Engineers’ Kitchener Barracks – only became a hospital after the war in 1947. That was after the RAF established an air station at Changi, building on an air strip laid during the Japanese Occupation.

Kitchener Barracks was part of the larger POW camp complex in Changi in the early part of the Occupation until early 1943. During that period, a POW hospital was set up in Roberts Barracks – in what is now Changi Air Base (West) – where the Changi Murals were painted.

Kitchener Barracks was vacated when a significant proportion of POWs were moved out of Singapore to work on projects such as the Siam-Burma “Death” Railway and was subsequently used by Japanese personnel involved in supervising the construction of the airstrip.

There are no accounts of torture and in fact accounts of POWs held at Kitchener Barracks tell us that the POWs had minimal contact with the Japanese troops during their time there. Dispatches sent by General Percival to the War Office in London prior to the Fall of Singapore also confirms the fact that there was the hospital at Changi did not then exist.

---

 

First of 2018 visits will be to the former Naval Base housing area in Sembawang

Details of Visit:

Date : 2 June 2018

Time : 10 am to 11.45 am

Registration: https://goo.gl/forms/bcdJ8nlccdtBiqSo1 (Limited to 30 persons)
[Registration has closed as all places have been taken up. An email with instructions will be sent to all who have successfully registered through the above link.]

Participants must be 18 and above.

Do note that a unique registration is required for each participant. Walk-ins on the day will not be permitted. There is also a list of terms and conditions attached to the visit as well as clauses relating to indemnity and personal data protection you will need to agree to. Please read and understand each of them.

Do also note that some walking will be required for this visit.

---

A second series of “Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets” guided State Property visits is being organised this year with the very kind permission and support of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA). The visits will take place once a month starting from June and will possibly run until December 2018. The series will present an opportunity for registered participants to visit several State properties as well as discover each of the sites’ histories. The series this year will also see the participation of the Urban Sketchers Singapore (USKSG), who will be invited to sketch the properties involved (sign-ups managed separately by the USKSG).

The “Japanese Theatre”, thought to have been built during the Japanese Occupation.

The first guided visit of the series will be held on 2 June 2018. This will take participants into the heart of the former Sembawang Naval Base’s residential complex, set in an area where the base’s first housing units came up. The properties that will be visited each represent a different period of the base’s history: pre-war, the Occupation and the last days of the base. The properties involved are a Black and White house at Queen’s Avenue, a community hall cum theatre thought to have been built during the Occupation at Gibraltar Crescent and a rather uniquely designed block of flats – one of two that came up in the early 1960s at Cyprus Road.

The staircase of a tropical modern apartment block built in the 1960s.

The construction of the Naval Base, which stretched along Singapore’s northern coastline from the Causeway to what is today Sembawang Park, was a massive undertaking. Construction began in the late 1920s and included the relocation of villages, clearing of land – much of which was acquired by the Straits Settlements Government from Bukit Sembawang and donated to the Admiralty. It was only in the late 1930s that the base was completed. Built in response to the post World War I Japanese naval build up, the base was sized such that the entire British naval fleet could be accommodated. The base also boasted of the largest graving dock east of the Suez – the King George VI (KG6) dock.

A pre-war housing unit.

To accommodate the large numbers of British personnel that were needed, first to construct and then later to operate the base (the latter with their families), large numbers of residential units were built. Amenities, such as recreational facilities and schools, were also constructed. Many of these can still be found – spread across large areas of the former base given to housing. These properties and the settings they are still found in, provide an idea of the considerations that were taken by the military facility planners to provide a maximum of comfort and ease living conditions in what would then have been a strange and harsh tropical setting.

Found in the housing area – the “Ta Prohm” of Singapore?

With the pullout of the British military forces in 1971, the base ceased operations. Besides the large number of former residences¹, parts of the base are still very much in evidence today. These include some of the base’s working areas – such as the former dockyard (which was taken over by Sembawang Shipyard in 1968) and the former Stores Basin (now used as a naval supply depot and as the wharves of Sembawang Port).

The block of flats in Cyprus Road.

---

¹Some 400 former residences including low-rise flats were handed over to Singapore in 1971 when the British pulled their forces out. Many saw use by the ANZUK forces and later the New Zealand ForceSEA.

---

Previous Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets visits to the former Naval Base:

• Old Admiralty House
• Former View Road Hospital / Naval Base Asian Police Quarters

More on the Naval Base:

• The largest dock east of the Suez in the midst of a world that is to change
• Last post standing (a remnant of one of the main gates into the naval base)
• History rich Sembawang, gateway to Singapore’s WWII past (Straits Times 19 June 2016)

---

Magical spaces : Bukit Brown in the rain

A place so magical, there is no need for words ….

---

More magical Singapore spaces:

51 photographs taken in Singapore that will take you away from Singapore

---

 

The unseen passageway in the National Gallery

One of the functional spaces now can a glimpse of within the former Supreme Court in its reincarnation as a wing of the National Gallery Singapore, are the two prisoner cells. Once part of what I often refer to as the caged passageway – a unseen network of spaces under the courtrooms through which defendants in criminal cases could be bought for their court appearances with a minimum of fuss and away from public spotlight, the cells are the most visible of the parts of this network that are still with us today.

The Holding Cells today – a popular spot for a photograph to be taken.

Much of it, including interview rooms and office spaces arranged around the cells, have since been converted. Part of a corridor, I am told, and the two cells – once part of a row of twelve, are all that is left today to remind us of the unseen passageway. Now a popular spot to have a photograph taken at, the two cells are now the unseen passageway’s most visible part, serving to remind us of the building and its short but eventful history.

The caged passageway seen during the post-war war crimes trials (source: Imperial War Museums © IWM (IND 4999).

---

Photographs of the “caged passageway” taken in 2010

The entrance – the steel doors opened up to the service road being the courthouse and ii was through them that vehicles ferrying defendants from prison to the Supreme Court entered.

Entry to an office space.

Another office space.

A filing cabinet.

A caged stairway.

The row of cells – there would have been twelve such cells.

Inside a cell.

The WC inside the cell.

The passageway leading to the courtrooms.

The stairway up to a courtroom, entry to which was through a trapdoor (which can still be seen in their closed positions) placed behind the dock.

---