Going inside the haunted Hillview Mansion.

Since first writing about the infamous Hillview Mansion on Bukit Gombak in 2012, I've added about another half a dozen more articles related to it. The last two being exclusive exterior photos of the 'haunted' building photographed and shared here by my reader Lester Yeong. 

(Links to these articles are at the end of the blog)

In this article, I will take you inside the Hillview Mansion to see the unfinished and abandoned interior.
The dark, creepy and unkempt rooms with the incomplete construction works would definitely have made any brave intruder think the place was haunted. Evidence of the sudden abandonment were all over the scene.
Of course, today the building no longer exist, being demolished long ago, with only the driveway retaining wall and the original gate remaining. 

I am not too sure if the State has taken back the land but prominent "No trespassing" signs and even a Police notice were erected as a warning that people have been prosecuted for the offence. (Adventurers and hikers to Bukit Gombak please take note.)

Building Facade

Abandoned Construction Works

Interior Trim & Decor

Links to other Hillview Mansion articles:-

The Haunted House at Hillview
The burial of the Hillview Mansion

The landslides at the haunted grounds

Why the Hillview Mansion was abruptly abandoned
Exclusive Photos of Hillview Mansion Part 1
Exclusive Photos of Hillview Mansion Part 2

The sarabat stalls at Hillview Road

A sarabat stall is basically a makeshift coffee stand, in days gone by.
Unlike an itinerant or travelling hawker, the sarabat stall was usually rooted temporarily at the same spot for a period. It would sell freshly brewed coffee, tea, cold drinks and snacks for a quick bite.

Often ramshackle and unkempt, they were found usually at places like construction sites or near places where people gathered like markets, factories and bus terminals. It was mainly good for a quick cuppa or a smoke during office break or while waiting for the bus.

 
The name sarabat derived from the Malay sarbat or ginger juice that was mixed with the milk tea, the main beverage sold at these stalls. This concoction is still available today as Teh Halia.

The sarabat stall opposite the Eveready battery factory gates along Hillview Road.
Behind the fence is the Hong Kong Rope Manufacturing Co. 

There were two sarabat stalls that operated along Hillview Road in the 1950s and 1960s.
These were located aside the main road directly opposite the main gate of the National Carbon factory. This factory was also known as Union Carbide or the Eveready battery factory.  The factory began production way back in 1948 but it is not clear as to when the sarabat stalls starting operating at this location.

The above photo shows one of the two sarabat stalls in existence then and was taken pre-1963. 

The aerial photo below of Hillview Road was shot in 1958 and already shows the two sarabat stall along the fence of the Hong Kong Rope factory (yellow circle).

Beside the two semi-permanent sarabat stalls, I was told that there was also an occasional push cart hawker selling cut fruits and cold plum and starfruit juice at times. These hawkers catered mainly to the factory workers during their lunch and tea breaks, especially to the staff of both the Eveready factory and the adjacent Hong Kong Rope Manufacturing factory. Customers included the occasional kampong folks and residents of Princess Elizabeth Estate as well, who had to pass the stalls as they walked along Hillview Road to reach the main road at Upper Bukit Timah.

(Photo source: NAS)

The sarabat stalls were located at the top of the ridge, across which Hillview Road ran from Upper Bukit Timah Road to Hillview Avenue. It was at this very point that the Green Bus Co #5 bus had Request Bus-stops* on both sides of the road, obviously to serve the factory workers as it was just by the company's main gate. 

In the above picture of Hillview Road, you might be able to make out the sloping road that peaked at the area where the stalls were. Today, the slope is not as steep as it once was. The gradient having been reduced with the building of the condominiums around the mid 90s, as well as with the regular accretion from road re-surfacing and maintenance over the decades.

(Photo source: NAS)

Green Bus Co Service #5 driving up the slope from Hillview Circus.
It would crest the Hillview ridge just where the sarabat stalls stood at the top of the ridge.
Note that even in 1955, there were no concrete footpaths along the sides of Hillview Road.

(Photo source: NAS)

Green Bus #5 coming up the slope from Upper Bukit Timah Road side.
The KTM Railway girder bridge was built when Hillview Road was constructed in 1947.

(Photo source: ijamestann.blogspot.sg)

Photo taken in 2011 after the removal of the KTM railway line over Hillview Road.

You can see that the slope is much gentler than in the old days.

*Request Bus-Stops
For those who are unaware, especially of the younger generation today, bus stops in the old days of the mosquito buses were known as 'Request Stop'.  A bus will stop at a 'bus-stop' only when a passenger wanted to alight by pressing the bell, or if there were passengers waiting to board at the marker, which was usually only a metal pole with a number plate. The bus would continue on if the bell was not rung, unlike today where it is usual for all buses to stop at every bus-stop in order to keep to their planned scheduled times.

A "Request Stop"  outside St. Andrew's Cathedral

 


In those days, there had been many incidents and arguments where the bus would not stop while a passenger will claim that they had rung the bell. Nasty bus drivers, which were common, might hesitantly and purposely stop a long way from the Request Stop and some would even continue on and let the passenger off only at the next stop! Most bus-stops did not have shelters except for those in popular areas. The Request-stops at Hillview Road were not sheltered in those days.

(Photo source: NAS)

The sarabat stall opposite the gate of the Eveready battery factory.

At the far right distant, you can see the KTM railway bridge running over Hillview Road.

My own personal recollection of the sarabat stalls is very vague. It would be in the early 1960s when my father was still working at the Eveready company. I can only recall that my dad used to stop his car at the sarabat stall and would alight to buy cigarettes from the Indian Mama (uncle). We would be driving out from Princess Elizabeth Estate and he would only patronise this stall as he was familiar with them. It was a habit he had, or perhaps he had credit with the Mama? Apart from that scant memory, I cannot recall if I ever had a drink at this stall at all. I was too young then.

Illegal itinerant hawkers as well as makeshift sarabat stalls were all moved off the streets from 1965 to 1971 as part of the government's plan to resettle all hawkers to more hygienic and proper facilities.
So, for those of you who lived at Hillview after the mid 60s, it would be very unlikely that you would have known of these sarabat stalls. There were also sarabat stalls at the #5 bus terminus at Princess Elizabeth Estate too.


In a future article...
If you look again at the aerial overhead photo, you can see a yellow square at the junction of Upper Bukit Timah Road and Hillview Road. This was directly across Hillview Road from the old Chartered Bank. 
It marks the homes of two Indian families who used their house front as shops to sell Indian food. Many will recall these two Indian shop houses as they were also beside the main bus stop heading into the estate.

I will blog about this eating house in a future article, as well as about the HDB Food Centre (photo below) that was built in 1994 at the new HDB Hillview Estate.

(Photo source: Internet)

Quick links to related articles about Hillview Road
The building of Hillview Road
The removal of the Railway Bridge
The development of Hillview Avenue
The Eveready Battery factory

Malayan Guttas Vintage Photographs

Malayan Guttas Ltd  was a pioneer factory at Hillview, Bukit Timah. 
Many of you may never have heard of this company,  unless perhaps, you once lived nearby around Hillview or you might have known of it perusing through this blog of mine where I had previously written a few articles about it. (links below)

However, you will definitely recall its most famous product - the Wrigley Spearmint Chewing Gum.
The Wrigley Company of Chicago USA set up the factory in 1947 soon after the end of World War Two.

Following the end of war, the British Government offered extremely good incentives for foreign companies to invest in the colonies to revive the war-torn countries' economies. One major incentive was that their manufactured goods would be entirely tax-free if it was manufactured, distributed and sold in any British Commonwealth nation.

As a result, Malayan Guttas became the biggest manufacturer and distributor of chewing gum in all the British Commonwealth out from its factory in Singapore.
The other major incentive for Malayan Guttas was that its principal ingredient for making chewing gum could only be found in the Malay Peninsula, i.e. the then Malaya, Borneo and Indonesia. This was the resin Gutta Percha.

Gutta Percha resin is the inedible bit that gum chewers spat out and made a mess of the sidewalks!
Gutta Percha came from the endemic Sapodilla tree, of which the Chiku fruit tree was one species.
However, extracting the gutta percha resin was primitive even in those days. It had an unsustainable and destructive process in its extraction. They had to chop the entire tree down to bits and boil the wood to extract the resin. 
By the 1960s, due to the scarcity of the Sapodilla trees, they switched to the resin of the Jelutong tree. So Malayan Guttas became the biggest source of Jelutong resin and the centre for worldwide distribution.

Ironically, chewing gum was banned in Singapore in 1992 but by a strange twist of fate, the entire region of Hillview where the factory sat was then re-designated into a 'residential development zone'. The Wrigley Company sold the land to a private developer for a fortune in the late 1990s. The land was developed into the now Hillington Condominium complex.

The newly built Malayan Guttas factory in 1948.

Recently, I was very fortunate to receive a package of old photos from Switzerland.
It came from Pierre-Yves Bünzli, son of Mr Bünzli who was the General Manager in the late 50s to the early 60s.
In those days, the GM was numero uno. He oversaw the entire operations and personally lead many expeditions to Borneo to source for Jelutong resin.

The cache of vintage pictures, of which I will release periodically in future articles, were of the factory operations and of the staff.  Many of the staff were from the old Princess Elizabeth Estate and if you do recognise anyone of them in the photos, please comment below.

The cache of vintage photos I received.

The machinery used in the resin extraction

The boilers used for resin extraction

Crates of resin extract stored at the back

Staff Group Photo c.1962

Staff function at the factory grounds.

Links to articles about Malayan Guttas
Factories around Princess Elizabeth Estate (5)
A daughter remembers her father at Malayan Guttas
A history of Hillview Part 2

1924 map of Hillview area.

Recently, I was chatting with a friend about the old Singapore-Woodlands Railway, aka the Tank Road-Kranji Railway of 1903. This railway ran past Hillview along Upper Bukit Timah Road. I mentioned I had an old map which showed the railway alignment and went to search my archive. I have not used this map previously in my blog because I couldn't link much to what I could say about Princess Elizabeth Estate, it being drawn 30 years before Hillview and PEE even existed.

Here is an extract of the 1924 map. I have superimposed the main roads of today's Hillview into the map for you to reference in reading the map.

Click on the picture for a detailed view.

On seeing this old map and scrutinising it closely this time, I came to a realisation that I was mistaken all this while about the old 1903 rail alignment. I had always assumed that the line ran alongside Upper Bukit Timah Road from Mendoza Village, up to where the Ford factory would be, and then followed the road downhill and northwards towards Bukit Panjang. 

From the map, I saw that from where Ford would be, it continued up on a high embankment (in fact following what is today Hume Ave!) before coming down towards the Chartered bank /MRT Station level and then continuing on northwards.
It did not run alongside Upper Bukit Timah Road from where Ford would be to the Chartered Bank! You live and you learn new things everyday. I stand corrected.

This is the junction of Hume Ave and Upp Bt Timah Road, just after where the old Ford factory was.

The 1903 Singapore Kranji Railway travelled up on the road on the left (now Hume Ave). Upp Bt Timah Road (right) went downhill from here towards Bukit Panjang. I had mistakenly assumed the old 1903 Railway followed the downhill road.
The 1932 KTM Railway was on a different alignment parallel to Upp Bt Timah Road here, beyond the trees to the right. The 1932 KTM Railway would cross Upp Bt Timah Road at the black Truss bridge near today's Rail Mall. (Jalan Asas)Pic from Google Earth,

In line with the recent articles I wrote about the history of Hillview, and looking closely at the map, you can see that the entire area was marked with 'rubber trees' or rubber plantations (green map symbols). So this confirmed that the entire Hillview area was a rubber growing region in 1924.

Also marked in the area around the peak of Bukit Gombak (top left) you can see markings of 'pineapple' symbols.  This would also confirm that the Hillview region went through the agricultural stages from gambier to pineapple and lastly to rubber.

Lastly, this map also vindicates what I always debunked as a myth when people ascribe the name Bukit Batok to the 'coughing' of the dynamite blasting of the granite quarry giving rise to the name of the hill as Bukit Batok - "Coughing Hill".  (Map lower centre)
The quarry at Bukit Batok, called the Poh Kim Quarry, operated only after World War 2 ended in 1945. Yet this 1924 map already had the name Bukit Batok pinned to it. So the coughing hill theory is totally debunked.

Something, you might also want to note is that in this 1924 map, Upper Bukit Timah Road and Woodlands Road were actually named as Kranji Road.

This is a superimposed Google map over the 1924 which I used to get the road alignments.

Note: The 1903 Tank Road-Kranji Railway is a different rail line to that of the 1932 KTM (Keretaapi Tanah Melayu) Railways that ran almost in the same alignment from the black railway bridge at Rail Mall to Woodlands. 

Lee Kuan Yew's Walkabout at Princess Elizabeth Estate 1963

Nineteen Sixty-three was a tumultuous year both for me and for Singapore.
For me, I was still in primary school learning my ABCs and Times Table. Yes, in my time, children hardly ever attended kindergarten then. We started 'learning' in primary school. I was barely cognisant of what was happening outside of my school life!

For Singapore, it was a politically heady time. Singapore had declared itself independent from the United Kingdom, it appointed its own Head of State (Yang di-Pertuan Negara) and had its own Prime Minister. In de facto, Singapore freed herself from British colonisation that year.
Ahead was a planned merger with some states of Malaya and Borneo, that was being opposed both locally and internationally!

In the political turmoil after the 1959 election, Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew won a 1962 referendum for merger with the Federated States of Malaya and some North Borneo states to form the new Malaysia.  To quell opposing views about the forth-coming merger, Mr Lee visited all 51 constituencies in Singapore in 1963 to explain their rationale for this merger.

On 5th May 1963, he visited Princess Elizabeth Estate as part of his tour of Bukit Timah Constituency.

Keep in mind that back in 1963, there were no resident's committees, no citizen consultative branches, no grassroots organisations, etc. Estates, kampongs, villages and settlements were all run by whoever appeared to be the leader and accepted by the community as head. All were volunteers.

At Princess Elizabeth Estate, the 'management' of the estate was taken up by the community centre management committee (CCMC), who sort of oversaw more than just what took place within the community centre. They also played the role of  'estate managers' when requested and acted as liaisons with officialdom on behalf of residents in the estate.
The community centre was not as yet under the purview of the People's Association.
Then they were all volunteer residents from the estate who stepped forward to help their own community.

I recently came across archived photos of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's visit to Princess Elizabeth Estate in 1963, during which he also laid the foundation stone for the new People's Association Community Centre building at Prince Charles Rise. These photos are from the archives of the National Archives Singapore (NAS) and all copyright belong to them. I do not own any of the attached photos.

If you lived at Princess Elizabeth Estate then and can recognise anyone from these pictures, please do drop me a comment so that we can all enjoy these old memories the better.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew arrives at Princess Elizabeth Estate in his Landrover along Princess Elizabeth Drive.
Children from Princess Elizabeth Estate School lined the road as guard of honour to welcome him.
PEE School is at the far background and the row of houses at the left were the new
Popular Estate terraced houses that were not yet occupied.

I can still vividly recall this event and more so because we schoolchildren were each given a cupcake and a bottle of
Green Spot orange drink when we were re-assembled back in school after his arrival.

Mr Lee being garland by Dr Raja at the car park that was also the Green Bus Terminal.
Can anyone remember that Estate signboard at the bus terminal?
Dr Raja, the only physician in our estate was the CCMC Chairman at the time.

The walkabout began with a tour of the estate and meeting residents.
They were walking across the small field in front of Blk 22. In the background is the rear of Blk 21 where I lived.
Dr Raja leads the entourage in front of LKY.
Mr Lee Teck Hup is at the far right.

Passing Blk 20 Princess Anne Hill, the longest block of flats in the estate.

Coming down (Princess) Elizabeth Drive from Blk 24.
Notice how narrow Elizabeth Drive was? With cars parking along the edge, another car can pass only in one direction.
If cars came head on, someone had to reverse and back away to allow the other to pass.

The same procession from an obverse view. LKY waving to residents at Blk 23.
The man beside Dr Raja in front I can only remember as Tony Chua's father.

Entourage heading down Princess Anne Hill to Prince Charles Rise to the new
PA Community Centre building site for LKY to lay the foundation stone.
Man on the left of LKY was my father, Tann Yean, who was also on the CCMC,
Dr Raja on the right of LKY.

LKY speaking to residents on the construction site of the new PA community centre
in front of Blk 17, Prince Charles Rise.
He spoke about the upcoming Merger with Malaya to form Malaysia.

The new PA Community Centre was built over the old badminton courts and the grove of Mangosteen trees.
Notice the ramshackle huts and zinc roofs on the far left? That was the old 'market' stalls.

Mr Lee laying the foundation stone for the new Community Centre.