The Hillview Circus

One of the earliest construction from the development of the Hillview area, and in fact, the last surviving original feature today is the Hillview Circus.
The circus*, or more commonly called a roundabout today, was built in 1948 as part of the roadworks leading to the two pioneer post-war factories being built then at Hillview.
*(Circus, from the latin circ, meaning circle and was typically termed in the British colonial days as traffic circus or traffic circle)

The two post-war factories were the Malayan Guttas Co Ltd and the National Carbon Co Ltd. Malayan Guttas produced the famous Wrigley Chewing Gum, while National Carbon manufactured the Eveready dry cell batteries. Both factories began construction in 1947 on land that were generously doled out to foreign corporations to help with the post-war economic recovery of Singapore.

This aerial photo taken on 15 April 1948 shows the construction in progress of the two factories and the building of Hillview Road and Hillview Avenue. The Hillview Circus was located at the junction of these two roads. The KTM Railway girder bridge was also constructed at the same time over Hillview Road.  During the construction of this girder bridge, the railway line had to be temporarily diverted to allow for the construction of the bridge.

Creation of Hillview Road and Hillview Avenue to serve the two new factories of National Carbon and Malayan Guttas.
A new girder bridge was required to support the KTM Railway line over the new Hillview Road.
This original girder bridge was removed in Nov 2011.

The completed development of Hillview Avenue and Hillview Road in 1950.

During the construction of the factories, a temporary road track was created directly from Upper Bukit Timah Road into the construction sites. This track can be seen at the upper right corner and was the primary access way until Hillview Road, that connected Upper Bukit Timah Road, was completed.
The above picture show both the completed railway girder bridge and Hillview Circus.

SAME, SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Hillview Circus in 1955.
The bus attempting the incline at Hillview Road is Service No.5 of the Green Bus Co.

Hillview Circus in the year 2000.
The HDB flats in the background formed the Hillview HDB Estate built in 1975.
In 1999, HDB announced that Hillview Estate would be demolished under the SERS programme.

At one corner of Hillview Circus, there used to be the Castrol (Far East) Ltd, a British lubricant manufacturer with their first overseas plant located in Singapore in 1963. This lubricant maker sold the land that subsequently was bought by private condominium developers.  The site is now occupied by the Glendale Park and Hillview Park condominium complexes.

Castrol Far East Ltd

Glendale Park Condominium

Changes are still ongoing around Hillview Circus. HillV2, a shopping mall, as well as the PA Bukit Batok Community Club now surrounds the other sides of Hillview Circus with a new road, Hillview Rise separating these complexes.

How much longer Hillview Circus will remain as it is is anyone's guess. In Singapore, roundabouts or circuses are now an anachronism in today's fast paced and high speed traffic. Most likely, we will see the circus replaced with a signalised traffic crossroad. Who knows?

TRIVIA: Did you know that Hillview Avenue was once used as Singapore's Grand Prix race track circuit in 1956 and 1957? Long before the Thomson Circuit or the Marina Bay F1 Circuit!
Click on this link to read about the history of the Hillview Grand Prix circuit.

Related links to this article:-
An anecdotal history of Hillview, Singapore
The Railway Bridge at Hillview

The Eveready Factory (National Carbon/Union Carbide)
The Wrigley Chewing Gum factory at Hillview

More football teams of the 60s.

Football was the one sport that galvanised our estate back in the 60s and 70s.
Blessed with a free and open regulation size football pitch within the estate, several teams were formed from ad-hoc to almost semi-pro status. In those days it was all amateur football but then our estate teams had managed to make a name for themselves winning national and constituency competitions.

Unfortunately for me, football was not in my blood and my only contacts with it was as an evening spectator when all the 'small boys' would gather around the field to watch and pick balls that roll to our sidelines.

But I can recall the Union Carbide team who had their regular training on the pitch after work.
My dad worked at Union Carbide and thus I came to meet people like Quah Kim Choon (one of the Quah family) and Mahat Ambu, Singapore's centre-forward at that time. These two big names were enough to draw crowds to watch their training.

I am at a loss with the number of teams formed or even the team names they call themselves by, so if anyone remembers, please drop me a line in the comments below.

Aswan, whose family lived beside the football pitch, had just sent me 2 photos of some teams that played back in the 60s.
In the first photo, I can identify Glen Hogan in the striped jersey. This would then date the photo to the mid-60s. If you can identify anyone else, please share with us here.

Thanks to Udin Anwar for identifying all the footballers.
This team was called the ASAS FOOTBALL CLUB.

Links to other articles about our estate footballers:

1. Photos from ex-residents (#21) - Estate footballers.

2. The Estate Footballers.

Tien Tor Long

A documentary series was recently broadcasted on Channel New Asia called Days of Disaster.
Last Sunday, March 8, there was an episode titled Megafloods which covered the floods of Singapore over the past few decades.

I was asked to watch this episode by my blogger friend, ex-schooltecher Mr Yeo Hong Eng.
 Yeo Hong Eng is the author of The Little Red Cliff, a book in which he tells of his young days living in rural Bedok.  Hong Eng was featured in the episode in an interview about his days when Bedok was severely flooded in 1954.

During the show, a picture flashed on the screen for about one second but it immediately caught my eye! It had nothing to do with floods but it was shown as an example of industrialisation in Singapore.

The picture they used was the Union Carbide factory at Hillview Road.

Screen capture from Channel News Asia.

Many of the early residents of Princess Elizabeth Estate would be closely associated with this factory as many of them worked there. These include both my father and my mother who were once employed by Union Carbide. I have previously blogged about the factory in an earlier posting here.

People living in the vicinity of Hillview will know the factory as the Eveready battery factory or Tien Tor Long in the local dialect. Tien Tor means battery and Long is factory in Hokkien.

It was a landmark at Upper Bukit Timah in those days because of its tower which can be seen from far away.
At the top of the tower was a huge model of an Eveready Silver battery which was lit up at night and acted as a beacon. It could be seen from far off coming up or down Upper Bukit Timah Road.

In the picture you can spot Princess Elizabeth Estate in the background at the base of Bukit Gombak. The private estate beside it does not seem to have been built yet so I surmise that this picture was taken before 1965. If so, then the factory would have been known as National Carbon and not renamed as Union Carbide yet.

From the angle of this picture, I reckon that it was shot from the top of Fuyong Estate which lies across the main Upper Bukit Timah Road. Most probably from the slope where today the St Francis Methodist School lies.

It is one of the clearest picture I have yet seen of Tien Tor Long.

Hillview seen from Bukit Timah Hill

I found an old picture of the Hillview/Bukit Gombak area taken around the late 1960s.
Unfortunately, the quality is not too good but several landmarks can be seen.
This was taken from Bukit Timah Hill just behind the malay kampong (foreground) at Fuyong Estate.

Click on photo for an enlarged view.

A. Princess Elizabeth Estate
B. RAF radar station on Bukit Gombak summit.
C. Popular Estate. (Jalan Zamrud/Intan/Batu Nilam)
D. Bukit Gombak slope being cleared for building of Bamboo Grove Park
E. Rheem Hume (Hume Industries)
F. KTM railway truss bridge over Upper Bukit Timah Road.
G. Fuyong Estate (fronted today by Rail Mall)
H. Union Carbide (Eveready battery) factory

Directly under letter 'D' is a tall white structure which was a windmill at Hume Industries.

Bukit Gombak below the radar station was not as forested as it is today.
There were many small farms on the slope of Bukit Gombak in 1970.

The rubber trees above 'D' still exist today but is now within the Mindef security fence.
It may the the last remnant of a rubber estate found in Singapore.

In the foreground of the photo is the malay kampong at Lorong Chamar which was behind Fuyong Estate. There were several tracks that led up to Bukit Timah summit from here (May still be there today).


Related link: Aerial view of Hillview

The Estate Footballers.

Princess Elizabeth Estate was blessed with a regulation size soccer pitch built within the estate compound.  Lovingly referred to by residents as  “the Big Field”,  the football field was the focal point for residents who gathered in the evenings to watch football matches or team practices.

Having a communal field led to many informal teams formed by groups of residents and some became very proficient in their skills. E Shanmugaratnam was a national player who honed his skills playing with the estate teams. The 1^st inter-constituency football championship was won by a team from P.E.E.

In the 1960s, the pitch was the home ground for the Union Carbide factory teams. They had staff players like Mahat Ambu, who was the Singapore Centre Forward and Quah Kim Choon from the famous local Quah football family (brother of Kim Lye and Kim Song). 

Large crowds would gather whenever the Union Carbide teams played. The Union Carbide ‘A’ team won the Singapore Business House Football League many times and was a renowned powerhouse in Singapore football in those days.

Here is a photo of one of the resident football teams.

Photo was taken during a competition at Boys Town in 1975.

Back row L-R: Ah Kiong (blk 17), Aswan (blk 10), Miswadi (blk 10), Mohd Anwar (blk 18),  Ratnam (blk 18), Leong Weng Soon (blk 9)

Front L-R: Whye Nyan (blk 23), Rahim (blk 19), Yusoff Rahmat (Blk 18), Aziz (blk 23), Binhan (blk ?), Selamat Ali (blk 6).
Photo was contributed by Baharudin Anwar.