Unknown / No. 8 Police Station (2nd generation), IL598 [????-1925]

Submitted by David on Wed, 08/20/2014 - 16:19
Current condition
Demolished / No longer exists
Date closed / demolished
(Day & Month are approximate.)

Completion date approximate. Both dates taken from the Offbeat Magazine article:

((The first)) No. 8 Police Station, located in Station Street, Tai Ping Shan District, gave the street its name. In use from 1870, the station had to be moved to the nearby Hospital Road during re-development of the Tai Ping Shan District in the late 1890s, immediately after the bubonic plague epidemics. ((ie the second generation)) It was demolished in 1925. A new No. 8 Police Station ((the third)) in High Street was inaugurated in 1928 and then demolished in 1934. The fourth No. 8 Police Station was built on the same site and was completed in late 1935. It now houses the Crime Hong Kong Island Regional Headquarters.

This page refers to the second generation. We have pages for the first generation at http://gwulo.com/node/32521, and the third generation at: http://gwulo.com/node/9098

Later place(s) at this location
Hospital / Bonham Roads Basketball Court [????-????]

Tags

Photos that show this Place

Tai Ping Shan Panorama
1870s
Western District c1900
1896
Blake Garden Construction
1897

Comments

I've set the completion date for this building back to unknown. I'd previously set it as 1895, based on the Offbeat article shown above, but the two-storey building appears in the c.1870 photo shown above.

I guess that the Police had to find a new location at very short notice once Tai Ping Shan was evacuated after the plague, and so moved to this existing building nearby.

I'm not sure what it was named or used as before it was a Police Station.

The 1924 map shows this is lot IL 598.

I stand to be corrected, (perhaps someone can help out here), but I think the 4th station on this site was pulled down for construction of the MTR station at this location.

This was the station to which George Wright-Nooth was posted when the Japanese captured HK, and he gives an wonderful description of surrendering to them at Christmas 1941 in "Turnipheads."

Incidentally, Mike Watson's & Crisswell's book gives an excellent history of all of HK's Police Stations from  1844 up to WW2.

We've got a page for the 4th generation site a bit further west on Hospital Road, see:

http://gwulo.com/node/8579

That building was redeveloped to become the new David Trench Rehabilitation Centre.

The old David Trench Rehabilitation Centre on Bonham Road (see http://gwulo.com/node/32550) was demolished during the MTR line work, and there's an entrance to the Sai Ying Poon MTR station there now.

Regards, David

The building was demolished in the first half of 1925, with the intention of constructing a new No. 8 Police Station on the same site (see point 110 in the 1925 PWD AR). However in July that year there was a major landslide (see https://gwulo.com/node/38024) when the retaining wall at the front of the site collapsed. That ended plans to build a police station on this site, and instead the Police Station moved into a building on Hospital Road, see: https://gwulo.com/node/9098.

Any reason why Caine Lane was not shown in the map? I know it used to connect to Caine Road at the junction with Ladder Street. Does anyone know when the disconnection happened and why?

Regards

David