Riding on in a world that will soon change

One of the few places in central Singapore left untouched by the spread of the concrete jungle, the area bounded by Thomson, Whitley Road (Pan Island Expressway) and Lornie Road, will in the not so distant future, see the change it has long resisted.

The area bounded by Thomson Road, Lornie Road and Whitley Road, hides some beautiful sights which has long resisted the advance of the concrete world.

The area, a large part of which Bukit Brown Cemetery and the cemeteries adjoining it occupies, is where a calm and peaceful world now exists, one not just of cemetery land reclaimed in part by nature, but of laid back open spaces, colonial era bungalows beautifully set in lush greenery, and where horses sometimes outnumber cars on a few of its roads.

Gates of Bukit Brown Cemetery.

While it may be a while before the concrete invasion arrives – much of the area has been earmarked for housing developments in the longer term, the winds of change have begun to pick up speed. Alien structures related to the MRT Station have already landed and exhumation of graves affected by the new road through Bukit Brown will commence soon.

Notices of exhumation at Bukit Brown Cemetery.

Close-by, across Thomson Road, which will soon see construction work beginning on the North-South Expressway, Toa Payoh Rise has been widened and looks nothing like the quiet and peaceful road it once was.

Toa Payoh Rise losing its gentle feel in 2010 as work started to widen the once laid-back road.

Marymount Convent, a long time occupant of the mound next to Toa Payoh Rise, already once affected by the construction of Marymount Road, held its last mass – the convent will have to vacate the land on which it has occupied for some 63 years. Not far away – at the corner where Mount Pleasant Road runs through, the houses and the Old Police Academy another with a long association with the area, will also not be spared. The expansive grounds of the academy was where many would have spent a Sunday afternoon in simpler days watching grown men kicking a ball on the field. Besides football matches close-up, one could sometimes get a treat of a glimpse at a parade or a Police Tattoo practice session as one passed on the bus.

Riding off into a sunset – the Old Police Academy south of the Polo Club will be one of the victims of the winds of change will may soon blow into the area.

With the many changes about to descend on the area, one probably constant along that stretch of Thomson Road – or at least the hope is there that it would be, is the Singapore Polo Club. A feature in the area for more than seven decades, the club first moved to the location, just as the dark days of the Occupation were upon us in 1941.

The Polo Club’s grounds as seen from Thomson Road.

Sitting across the huge monsoon drain in which many boys would once have been seen wading in to catch tiny fishes, the grounds of the Polo Club – with it huge green playing field, is one that I almost always kept a look out for, in the hope of catching a glimpse of a match underway.

Some of us would have fond memories of catching fish from the huge monsoon drain running by the eastern edge of the Polo Club.

The grounds, the lease on which the club holds for another 20 years, wasn’t the club’s first. One of the oldest polo clubs in the region (as well as being one of the oldest sporting clubs in Singapore) dating back to 1886, it was established by officers of the King’s Own Regiment – not too long after the rules of modern polo was formalised. The first grounds on which the sport was played at was one shared with golfers of the Singapore Golf Club at the Race Course or what is Farrer Park today.

The Polo Club’s Indoor Arena and Stables.

It does seem that from a 1938 newspaper article contributed by René Onraet, the Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police from 1935 to 1939, who was a keen polo player and also a President of the club that the game was also played at the reclamation site across Beach Road in front of Raffles Hotel. This was where the NAAFI Britannia Club / SAF NCO Club and Beach Road Camp were to come up, a site currently being developed into the massive Foster + Partners designed South Beach residential and commercial complex.

The grounds at Balestier Road which hosted the Singapore Polo Club from 1914 to 1941.

The club sought new premises after being prevented from using the Race Course grounds in 1913 – moving to its first dedicated grounds at Balestier Road (Rumah Miskin) in June 1914 – grounds now occupied by the cluster of buildings which once were used by the Balestier Boys’s School, Balestier Mixed School and Balestier Girls’ School.

The Prince of Wales playing polo at the Balestier Road ground in 1922 (source: http://archivesonline.nas.sg/).

The grounds were unfortunately limited in size, and a search was initiated for a new ground at the end of the 1930s. It was the club’s President, René Onraet, who was instrumental in securing the current premises, which incidentally was right by what was the Police Training School – the Old Police Academy.

The Singapore Polo Club has occupied its current grounds since 1941. The grounds were said to have been used as vegetable plots during the Japanese Occupation.

Although the grounds were ready at the end of 1941, it wasn’t until 1946 that the first game of polo was played on the grounds which by the time required some effort to restore it. The war had seen the grounds turned, as a couple of newspaper reports would have it, into vegetable plots – complete with drainage ditches and water wells. The club’s website makes mention of the Japanese Imperial Army converting the grounds into a gun emplacement area, before turning it into a squatter’s camp.

Prince Charles participating in a game on the Thomson Road ground in 1974 (source: http://archivesonline.nas.sg/).

Over the years, the club has expanded it membership and now includes activities such as equestrian sports, as well as having facilities for other sports. Along with club, the area around the club, also plays host to the likes of the Riding for the Disabled Association and the National Equestrian Centre at Jalan Mashhor.

The sun rises on Jalan Mashhor, home of the RDA and National Equestrian Centre.

Another view of Jalan Mashhor.

The Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA).

The National Equestrian Centre – with the Mediacorp Caldecott Broadcast Centre seen in the background. The Broadcast Centre is scheduled to move to Buona Vista in 2015.

The area where a healthy cluster of horse related activity centres are located is one which based on the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Draft Master Plan 2013 will be retained for sports and recreation use in the future.

Masjid Omar Salmah, at Jalan Mashhor which was built in the 1970s and is now long abandoned by Kampong Jantai it was built to serve.

Another view of the National Equestrian Centre.

The area where the Polo Club is (in green) on the recently released 2014 URA Master Plan, is designated for Sports and Recreation use, but the rest of the area around it may see a change (https://www.ura.gov.sg/maps/).

While it does look like this might remain a beautiful world for some time to come, time is being called on the gorgeous world which now surrounds it. It won’t be long before the wooded areas across Thomson Road are cleared for development. The greater loss will however be the places of escape to the west. That is the green and beautiful world of the cemetery grounds. Grounds where men and horses, and perhaps the good spirits of the world beyond us, have but a few precious moments in which they can continue to roam freely in.

Jalan Mashhor at sunrise.

The road to nowhere … at least for the time being (MRT related structures are clearly visible).

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More on the game of Polo and how it is played in Singapore: A Royal Salute to the sport of kings.

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The school next to the Police Academy

Sandwiched on a small plot of land off the Whitley Road stretch of the Pan Island Expressway (PIE), between the old Police Academy and the now infamous Whitley Detention Centre, is a little known road, Onraet Road. The road as well as its name, has an origin that has much to do with the Police Academy itself, as well as the detention centre, situated on a hill overlooking the road. Onraet Road was built to serve the Police flats that still sit somewhat obscurely in the background, and was named after a René Onraet, an Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police from 1935 to 1939, who had made his mark in the fight against communism and gambling in the early part of the twentieth century. He was also credited with forming the Criminal Intelligence Department, which later became the Special Branch of the Police force, the predecessor of the dreaded Internal Security Department, which runs the Whitley Detention Centre, which was in the spotlight not too long ago for the audacious escape from it made by terrorist detainee Mas Selamat Kastari.

A photograph of Whitley Primary School found online, with the Police flats at Onraet Road seen in the background.

Looking at Onraet Road from the PIE, to the Police flats are. The empty area in the foreground was once occupied by Whitley Primary School.

The Police quarters housed many Policemen who had originated from Malacca.

Most of us would have probably forgotten the Whitley Road before the PIE came into being, swallowing a substantial portion of the road as it was then, which along with the Police Academy, was perhaps known better for the Chinese cemetery that dominated most of the area and some large bungalows that stood around it. Onraet Road itself had a small community of mainly tenants of the Police quarters, built to house the rank and file of the Police trainees undergoing training at the Police Training Centre in 1954 (along with the road named after Onraet), which became the Police Academy, which had a community centre and even a primary school, Whitley Primary School, housed in a three storey building built in the fashion of the schools of the early 1960s, wedged in a narrow strip of land off Onraet Road, between the Whitley Road, the Police Academy and the Police flats. It is a school that I remember well, as my father taught at the school in the early 1970s, right up to the time it closed in 1975. The premises were annexed to the Police Academy subsequently and the building was used by the Police for a while before being torn down. It is interesting to note that based on my father’s recollections, the students mainly came from the nearby Police quarters, and many of their fathers who were Policemen, had originated from Malacca. A common answer when asked where they were going off to for the holidays was “Malacca”!

Part of the PIE runs over what was a Whitley Road, known for the Chinese cemetery, the Police Academy and the Police flats on Onraet Road.

We see a very different Whitley Road today from the one in the 1970s.

The area has changed substantially with the PIE cutting through it, the distinctive Police flats are still there, as is the old Police Academy and its large parade square, on which I remember seeing parades and rehearsals being carried out for the Police Tattoo which I could watch from a distance from the grounds of the school and when passing by on Whitley Road. Much of the graves that could be seen around have also gone – with perhaps only the ones around the Detention Centre and its surroundings left intact. I am not sure what will become of the old Police Academy, also known for its large sports field where we could watch football matches being played during the weekends. I suspect it would soon be redeveloped, and another charming part of Singapore would go the way of the many others which only remain in the memories of some of us.

The old Police Academy and its large Parade Square could be seen from the school and the former Whitley Road.

Whitley Road had several large bungalows, some of which are still around.