Pool in Lai Chi Kok – is it still there? [????- ]

Hi Peter

This structure you have highlighted as a pool is in fact a garage. I'm fairly certain that the property here is the original one from when the land was developed and the footprint of both the house and detached garage haven't changed over the years.

I'll try and get over there at some point in the next few days and take some up-to-date photos.

Phil

It's possible Peter, but then it would have been a tiny pool, not much bigger than a car.

Edit: kpl has kindly uploaded a recent image.

Off topic: that looks like a BMWi3!

Hi Peter, sorry for the misunderstanding, I was using the term "garage" in the British sense i.e. for storing a car.

The garage in question appears to be the same one that has always been at the property - the same shape and size (especially relative to the house, which is the same as when first built). Could there have been a pool there that was exactly the same shape and size and hence the confusion? Sure, but I doubt very much, given its size, that it would have had a springboard and deep end and have been large enough to accomodate more than just a very few people...there just isn't enough space. Perhaps one of the other properties had the pool you recall.

Phil

A photo of Chung Shan Terrace appears at: https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s7526g21r#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-62%2C-55%2C1123%2C1085 No change to the exterior.

I lived with my parents and siblings in No. 4 Chung Shan Terrace from 1952, in Wharf Company quarters.   Two storey apartment blocks, a long walk up from the bus!!   There was a different type of residential building at No. 1 - grey stone rather than cream as our homes were - never knew of a pool but I think the person who ran / owned the amusement park lived there - I learned to swim at the Amusement Park, and to roller skate!!    Later the hillside below us was developed into numerous blocks of smaller apartments and we were moved by the Company to Kowloon Tong.

I can be your remote video cam as I walk around if you want to FaceTime. 

I think we at No. 4 and the one to our left facing the buildings were occupied by Kowloon Wharf people - certainly in 1952-54.  I had to get the bus home from Star Ferry (where I dropped off the bus from KGV) which originally stopped way down and I had to walk past beach huts/swimming pavillions, the amusement park, a paddy field and up the hill.  There was a track down to the Village but I used the road all the way.  Eventually the No. 6 bus came as far as the amusements so shortened the walk somewhat...white KGV uniform  did help!

I think the whole area changed dramatically in my 36 years in Hong Kong! Would get well and truly lost now.

Just wondering, are the white two-storey houses up the hill Chung Shan Terrace?

Thos are certainly Chung Shan Terrace.....the lowest one was on quite a hairpin bend and the village pathway went down on that bend on the left of the photo.

I think the white buildings behind the amusement park were two blocks of flats called Happy Villas and housed UK RN or Military families in my day.  The paddy fields were behind them.  If you drove up Chung Shan Terrace and turned left into Castle Peak Road at the top you would come down to what was a leper hospital and then on into more built up areas.   Sham Shui Po and Mong Kok etc.

I think the No. 16 bus went from Jordan Road ferry terminal on the upper route and No. 6 from

Star Ferry along the bottom!!

The highest blocks in the photo are Chung Shan Terrace as they were, then the buildings lower down started to go up.....I would not recognise it after all these years.    Left there in about 1954-55  for Wharf quarters in Cambridge Road, Kowloon Tong, then to St George's Court in Kadoorie Ave.  When I married in 1964 lived over in Pokfulam and eventually left Hong Kong in 1986.    Thank you for sharing.

InsertAt first I thought there was nothing that I could add to this discussion but as it had its origins in the Springboard girl photograph and Peter's memory of his visits to a house and pool on the Chung Shan Terrace I have followed the thread and was pleasantly surprised to realize that I visited the old Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park site in 1981, when I went to the Sung Dynasty Village, built there. Over the past 40 years or so I have never known exactly where this was except that it was somewhere in the Western area of Kowloon.  To realize that it was actually built on the site of the old Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park raises all sorts of questions about who developed it and when, etc.  Perhaps those with a more detailed  and local knowledge of the history of Hong Kong might be able to contribute something on that.

Meanwhile, I have added  an excellent aerial 3D image from Google Earth that shows where the Sung Dynasty Village (and earlier, the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park) were and, especially, the two storey house at the right hand end of the upper terrace that is the one remembered by Peter. There is also my 1981 photograph of the acrobats in the Sung Dynasty Village that shows one of the rows of Greenwood Apartments up on  the Chung Shan Terrace, but Peter and I suspect that this was on a lower section of the terrace.

My goodness - what a difference 70 years can make!!!!   Lai Chi Kok and Chung Shan Terrace have taken on quite a different importance and status by the look of that photograph.   I am so pleased to see it as it is now, thank you.

Find someone with an iPhone in your household or neighborhood who uses FaceTime  .. and borrow it and them for 10 minutes.   There are a minimum of 100 people within a quarter mile radius of you with an iPhone, so… :-)… No excuse bucko (smiley face). The 15 to 18 year olds are always happy to show off. 
 

At a minimum write a note in these comments for the owner, and I will drop it off at the house for you tomorrow.

So to confirm, I'm to drop it off at the house in the photo posted by kpl ?

So to confirm, I'm to drop it off at the house in the photo posted by kpl ?

Letter delivered to the helper who said the owner was at the office. I especially pointed out the website name.  I gave my HK phone number as a text message contact. The nice guard at the top of the hill also heard my story, so I hope it will travel 

now I'm offf to the airport.  

"There has never been a swimming pool in all the houses at C S T. The closest swimming pool was inside Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park. Call me if you wish for more information.

The pool in LCK amusement park was turned into a small zoo.
 

The amusement park known as Lai Yuen has since been flattened n blocks of residential flats now sit on the site.  
 

The LCK bay has been reclaimed into a large landscaped public park with a much larger public swimming pool incorporated into the facilities.
 

In the 50s, the area was Mobil oil storage tanks beside the tree lined road. The area was developed into 99 blocks of flats in the early 70s. The development is known as Mei Foo Sun Tsuen. Mei Foo being the Chinese name for Mobil."

If it was not in CST, it might well be in Happy Villa. Happy Villa 樂園 was right behind Lai Yuen, and had bungalow or 2-story type buildings before it was redeveloped into the 2 highrise condo towers.

The owner is willing to talk with you on this topic.   Please contact me through David.

I was born at Chung Shan Terrace and lived there from the 1970s to 1990s. 
 

I am wondering if the pool you remember is further down closer to the mid guard post in Chung Shan Terrace. One could think it’s the end of the path before it joins Castle Peak Road because of the sharp bend there with the guard post. 
 

I am fairly certain I was told there are swimming pools at Chung Shan Terrace. I know there to be one house  in 1980s which expanded their pool and caused the bridge/road on the path to collapse during a storm. There was a lot of stir about that because it had been predicted by the feng shui master who told the family who lived by the bridge/road to move out as the bridge would fall. The feng shui master was hired that summer after a number of the houses were demolished for a new development. I was a child then, and all this is based on what my parents told me. But I do remember seeing the bridge/road collapse on the news at my grandparents house. 

I asked my mother, who still owns my childhood home. At the time we bought our place in 1974, there was no known pool in Chung Shan Terrace. Then in the 1980s, house number 7 built a high wall and housed a pool there. 
 

Hi OT/Peter:

The entrances on the westish-side of the lot in your mark-up at https://gwulo.com/media/44589 are right on the boundary with the lot that 2, Chung Shan Toi had been built on some time prior to 1952, based on Malcolm Trousdale's photo at https://gwulo.com/media/33308 that shows the original construction houses at 2, 3, 4 & 5 of upper Chung Shan Toi had been completed by then. To go through either of those entrances, one would first have pass through the lot of 2, Chung Shan Toi.

The new picture showing the back side of the house at https://gwulo.com/media/44633 shows somewhat the embankment along the northish-side of the lot of 1, Chung Shan Toi, which is at least three contour lines - the better part of 5 metres tall - as seen on the 1970 Lands Dept map on hkmaps.hk. Sadly, there is now another fence between Chung Shan Toi & Castle Peak Road (the one the gov't map I previously posted at https://gwulo.com/media/42998 - part of a notice for raising objection to the fence's construction), and I didn't have enough time to do preventative maintenance with the guard who would have seen me enter the gap between that new fence & the existing fence along the boundary of Chung Shan Toi (I would expect the guards to get a little excited seeing someone in there, despite it not being private land & therefore any of their concern). So no pictures from the back of the house for now. Anyway, that embankment & the amount of space between it & the house might be something else to help jog your memory.

The entrance to the building (item G) in https://gwulo.com/media/43011 does not match the current house. Most of the windows are curtained, so it has never been possible to see inside, though there does seem to be some sort of object just on the inside of the 1/F window roughly even with the end of the balcony (the smaller window roughly in the middle of the side of the house). That object, plus the door a bit further to the left on the G/F form limits that might suggest the staircase (item L) was a fairly steep one.

I now realise I should have paced the width of the garage, as that might establish the width of the pool (and from that, the length of the pool determined from any of the Land Dept maps). There is a new notice seeking objection (with map) on that new fence & being drawn to scale, I should also bring a ruler with me next time should it still be there. I do know of reconstruction of structures on private land being having been allowed, but on the original footprint. But to me, knowing how gov't only really cares about $$$ & given land leases I'm familiar with are rather specific, everything getting knocked down & something else being built there later still does not quite make sense to me (as does doing so after just a few years).

Anyway, potential food for thought & hopefully the new pictures will help.

Cheers!

-kpl.

G'day OT/Peter:

Check out https://gwulo.com/media/44645 - an aerial view that includes Chung Shan Toi taken on 1954-10-20. Hopefully I got everything right & haven't contravened copyright so that the post can remain - if not, then it can be seen at https://ncap.org.uk/frame-download/6-1-130-20-356

I believe it shows the current house at 1, Chung Shan Toi - and most importantly, is the closest reference found so far to when you were last there. It is a bit hard to make out given the low resolution. I should have time to chew on this some more - as well as your last post - in a few days.

An interesting & rather distractive distraction that resulted in a late start today on my first swim of the year at the beach nearest here now that Lai Chi Kok Wan is no more. Just enough sun & not quite enough wind to result in too much chicken skin after the first dip. Subsequent dips then possible after a celebratory beer of an appropriate temperature. Earliest swim since getting hooked by the habit a few years ago. Climate change needn't be all bad news, it seems. ;^)

Apologies for not embedding any images in my posts - just haven't had the time to do read up on how to do more than post them.

Cheers!

-kpl.

Peter/OT:

It seems the weather is a bit cattywampus everywhere as of late. I started snow skiing at around the same age that you were coming out this way to swim. Now I doubt I could tolerate living again where it regularly snows - the winters here... at least when we still had them - are bad enough. ;^)

Right, plans changed & I had an opportunity to ride back down to CST today. This time the security guard took an interest in what I was up to, so I had a chance to explain in my dismal 香港話. Seems it wasn't too bad, as when a colleague of his showed up later, I could hear him from outside the guard house explaining to her what I was doing & why (this lady I have seen many, many times on my bike rides). So I got to have a bit of a "chat" with her, which was very lucky as a large dog that always hangs around her that has never been friendly to me now knows I'm good in her books so I suspect he'll no longer bark at me as I ride by.

If I understood correctly, that there had been a pool there makes as much sense to her as it does to me.

I have a photo to upload of the eastish side of the house showing the rather short distance between the door on the G/F & the window on the 1/F where something somewhat visible through the window would suggest a staircase along that side of the house would have to be nearly vertical. It was also possible, perhaps due to being there in the morning, to see somewhat into the G/F through the curtains on the southish side window that there isn't a staircase there now. Demolishing the staircase, patching the hole in the 1/F floor where it went & then knocking a hole in the eastish-side wall to put in that door doesn't make quite make sense to me.

The footprint of the house is rectangular, so the outer walls of the house do not match your drawing above.

The Lands Dept map attached to the notice for objections to construction of the new fence along Castle Peak Road, like all such maps, is to scale & the garage measures twice as long as it is wide. The garage door is ~2.35 metres tall. The crack above the door running the width of the garage makes me wonder if a parapet wall was added later so as to turn the roof into a patio (the sort of change one might be able to make without getting in trouble with Lands Dept for having done so, as it turned the garage roof into usable space). The height of the interior of the garage is perhaps something like a metre less than the height of the parapet wall. The roof of the garage is tiled, has steps leading up to it from the rear & has a bit of railing between the parapet wall & what looks to be either granite or a granite-clad bit toward the back of the garage as can be seen in the peek through the entrance gate. My impression from having seen the garage in person is that its construction is not suitable for supporting much weight on its roof.

The two entrances on the westish side in your drawing would have opened directly into the lot of 2, CST. Malcolm Trousdale's photo from 1952 shows 2~5, CST having been built before 1, CST, so there might be recollection of that house, going through its lot to reach 1, CST & perhaps 2, CST wasn't occupied then or the occupants didn't mind the all traffic going through their property.

As I don't believe anyone can build something, then knock it down & build something else without the blessing of Lands Dept, I rather doubt anything other than the current house has stood on the lot of 1, CST. That makes the higher resolution version of the 1954-10 aerial photo something that could help square up the actual state-of-play with your memory. I have no idea how much the licence for that image might cost, nor if it will be of sufficient resolution to see what hopefully it might show. Perhaps someone with some knowledge of that might comment.

It pains me a little that all my data points go against your recollection. For now, a pool being where the garage was later built to me is the only plausible explanation, though seeing how the land behind the garage is higher than the floor of the garage, those two entrances in your drawing would have been at two different levels - as well as suggests the size of the pool. Any recollection of the size & depth of the pool would be good to know - it wouldn't have been much more than say 2 metres wider & something like that longer than a car.  Any wider than that & it would have extended into the lot of 2, CST and/or narrow the gap between the pool & the house of 1, CST.

Alternatively, the pool was at the same elevation as the westish side of the house & there was a 2-odd metre drop from the southish end of the pool & the level of the road in front of the property over a short distance.  The two entrances then might have been at the same level.  Construction of the garage then would have required excavation of a bit of dirt in order for its floor to be closer to the level of the road.

From what annelisec previously relayed from the current owner of 1, CST, a chance to have a chat in person could be helpful. That BMW i3 (well spotted eurasian_david, if you're reading this) was parked up outside again today, but I'm hesitant to bother anyone inside the house for fear of being unwelcome.

Right, enough for now. I need to scrub the last of the land mine I stepped in whilst trying to get a decent picture of the top of the garage before someone returns home who will object to even the slightest odour from a doggie jobbie. Today's photos to be uploaded later.

Cheers!

-kpl.

Morning Peter!

I uploaded today's pictures around the same time you made your last post.

The better view of the eastish side of the house was possible once the security staff knew I wasn't some dodgy geezer doing a recce in advance of a break-in. Based on your recollection of the staircase being somewhere roughly in the middle of the side of the house, due to the door & window mentioned, the staircase would have to have been rather steep if it were in that location - and your recollection seemed clear that the staircase didn't end closer to the northish wall of the house. To relocate the staircase - on the assumption that if there were two, you might remember seeing the other one - would require some work that to me doesn't make much sense.

You can also see in that side shot concrete pathways: one parallel with the side of the house & another roughly parallel with the stone wall along the CST road. Those form two sides of the triangle that can be seen in many of the Lands Dept maps. The third side of the triangle - roughly parallel with Castle Peak Road - is actually a drainage channel.

The other new picture shows the side of the roof of the garage. You can see a bit of the tiling where it extends slightly up the wall on the opposite side of the garage. The railing bridges the parapet wall which in the 2021 photo makes the garage look taller than it actually is.

The other end of the railing is attached to what probably is a granite block wall (not granite-clad concrete), that could very well have been an "architectural feature" that you have mentioned in your recollections. In the 1964 aerial photo, there's a bit of darkness to the west on the roof of the garage, which could very well the shadow from it. You can see shadows from other buildings that also suggest the picture wasn't taken in the afternoon.

If you zoom in further, there's another structure behind the garage open to the south with a shiny horizontal object that might be a pole. I suspect this might be a clothes drying shelter. It is also on a lot of the Lands Dept maps. I recall seeing recessed balconies on old (but not as old as 1, CST) buildings in the past that might have been for the same purpose.

What you pay for land depends a lot on its use. Use cannot be changed without lease modification. And paying money. Though usually the change is from something of lesser value to something greater. Downgrading the use doesn't quite make sense after a higher land premium has been paid (I doubt there's any rebate, gov't simply isn't that nice) & to construct something, then knock it down after just a few years would be throwing a lot of money away. If the operator of LCKAP (Clemo?) had something to do with developing CST & had the dosh to throw around like that, to me it would make more sense to have developed instead the other CST lots which weren't built on until some years later. CST clearly was developed in stages despite some amount of site preparation having been done throughout CST at the beginning, so maybe he wasn't quite rolling in it, or wasn't involved in all the developments, or... there's all sorts of plausible explanations.

There has to be an explanation to your overall recollection. You obviously didn't imagine the whole thing, mate! The walk up & that granite wall do make sense. A chat with the current owner would definitely help. As would the high-res 1954 aerial photo. Who knows, perhaps a Lands Dept map a little closer to the years concerned will eventually surface.

I got to finally befriend that dog & I won't be just another stranger when I see the guards next time, so it was worth it. Hopefully I've been able to help you & in time you'll be able to flesh more of this out.

Cheers!
-kpl.