Built : c. 1922/1923, with donation by Sir Paul Chater
Opened : 1924
According to Carl Smith's record [1], the Assembly Hall was at Cheung Chau Inland Lot 45. In the maps of Cheung Chau 1938 or present day, lot 45 seems missing.
CCIL 44 & 46 still exist today.
Could you help to suggest or locate its approximate location ?
By the way, its whole roof had caved in and all seats damaged, as newspapers of 1938. I just put a random placeholder on the Cheung Chau map above.
(update June 7)
Two more clues about the location I could find.
As W. J. Hinton's description in 1929, [2]
Of the foreign buildings the most conspicuous are the Meeting Hall of the European residents situated in the midst of their rather scattered bungalows,
and in the village, the red brick Police Station and the new School.
From Hongkong Telegraph (1938), [3] we read :
The Hall was built about 15 years ago ... It stands high on one of the island hills overlooking the reservation.
Does it offer some hints to confine its location to an area further southward ?
notes
1. grs.gov.hk catalogue
2. Cheung Chow - Long Island by W. J. Hinton on Journal of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch (1977). First published 1929.
Mr Hinton had been Professor of Economics and thrice as Dean of the Faculty of Arts in HKU until 1929.
The day before, I was given 'the' location by perplexity.ai and referred to a gwulo page [link]. From the reader's mentioned, read in the Journal of 1977 and found another article instead. The location is actually some AI hallucination :D
3. Hongkong Telegraph, 1938-10-1
Comments
3 Foreign Buildings noted by Mr. Hinton
Good Day Folk!
Based on my past residency on the island of Cheung Chau in the 1950s through the early 70s, lot 45 is most likely a spot not far from the top of the Fa Ping area or its nearby ridge shared with Lot 47. From this height, it gives a very complete view, covering most of the European bungalows all around, most of those by Nam Tam Wan, some on the Peak road west.
Any ship and ferry coming to or leaving Cheung Chau's main harbor should be within sight of this spot.
The Red Bricked Police Station, as I suspect that it was not yet on the high ground next to the Tung Wan beach. It was near the Electric Power House, quite close to the village's business district or near the starting location of Peak Road. After some years, there was a horrific ambush at the police station, so they had got to build a very big and military-styled building situated in the center of a huge empty field with high metallic wired fence around the perimeter, as it is seen even today, after some major expansions. The design would hold up for stronger defense against any ambush from bandits.
The foreign School was a thing which has been in my speculation. Cheung Chau was not yet a part of the British ruling colony even though foreign missionaries had already visited and set up some church mission points there, under the Chinese jurisdiction of the Ching Dynasty up to 1898. And there was no School Road, it was a grassy hillside, as shown in some photos.
But the map in the 194os has The Penial Church addressed as No. 1 School Road. It implies a set-up of an educational corridor has indeed been developed. There is a school site I want to investigate regarding its origin. If someone could check on the first educator who operated this address: 12-c School Road (area : 8000sq ft) in the 1920s, 30s, up to the 40s. In 1958, my dad rented this site to operate the Ching Tak kindergarten. Before the early 50s, it was named Sum-Sum (heart-heart in meaning) Kindergarten. But I don't have any clue about what happened before that.
Its construction is quite unique and has a higher level of design than the other schools in the island village. The major classroom is just as roomy as a church assembly. Its back wall has a square hole designed solely for movie projection from the other classroom. The front yard is very big. Its backyard is on a lower terrace, overseeing a Boundary Stone, which is the one in Tai Choi Yuen. It seemed to be a property that tended to accommodate foreign children, not to mention that the London Mission had already secured an adjacent land deal, prior to church planting.
I still keep a photo from the early 1950s which shows the playground (Sum Sum Kindergarten) under the Twin Red Coral Trees was actually partially planted with lawn and a dozen rabbits were kept as pets by the school kids there. The picture shows that I was a toddler with the rabbit house in my background.
more clues?
Cheers
Tung
approx. location of CC Lot 45
Thank you Tung for the kind sharing and info. Extracted a map section for the said area.
CCIL 47 is 12A Fa Peng Road according to current Land Registry Lot/Address cross reference table for New Territories.
It is near the Fa Peng Knoll 花屏山莊 currently (on middle right of above map snippet; click and [zoom], [+]).
So if we infer with the contour line of 50 and 'near the ridge of Fa Peng Road' :
CCIL 45 may well be some high land between CCIL 46 and CCIL 47 (e.g. in the middle of map).
It may be refined to an area encircled by the contour 50 and slightly northward ?
(the lot nos 44 to 47 also look more evenly distributed that way)
One more guess as a novice, with this Cheung Chau photo c.1924 (link), does it consider a high land for the few buildings residing on top on the right side ?
(just near the right side junction/crease of this stitched photo; press [zoom] to view)
any comments ?
The new school Hinton mentioned in 1929 may be the Anglo-Chinese School with red brick building as the admin report, at 5B School Road. Today it is the Cheung Chau Government Secondary School.
May add my ten cents for the other points you shared in a separate post later. Thanks again.
sources
- HK map services 2.0, with 'Multiple Lot Search'
- Gov't Administrative Reports 1928, p.531 etc
file : https://ccgss.edu.hk/sites/default/files/ccghis.pdf Readers may use google translate for this school history text in Chinese, using copy-and-paste.
other reference : David's walk through Cheung Chau's history in 2015 (link)
Three Foreign Buildings
Hello folk
The year 1924 view is made up of 3 pictures at different angles. The background on the left shows the hills and ridges of the Fa Ping region. The Assembly Hall could be somewhere over there, but it seems not to be in this picture because it hasn't been built yet. Therefore, it is impossible to pinpoint the exact location without further clues.
There seems to be a new police station building on top of a hill. It has both the Tung Wan beach and the village harbor in sight, for security against any sea bandit attack.
The middle picture is where the hillside of School Road can be identified. Nothing new except on site of 5B School Rd. It is one of the earliest foreign houses. It could be the school noted by Hinton. It turns out to be the island's Post Office as I knew it from the 1950s, next to the site of Government School, which was still an empty site. 5B School Rd' building seems to be barely visible above the village houses.
The 5B School Rd site seems to be just too small for a school and not even constructed with red bricks in appearance. So, more clues are required.
The roads on the hills at that time were mostly traditional walkways, muddy paths and stony slab-paved steps for steep allies and trails even in the European Reservation. Most of the roads were upgraded to vehicle user quality in early 1960s, but only the firefighting department, the police and the Navy patrol personnel have motor vehicles to use them quite once a while.
Many foreign bungalows could be characterized by their trees and plants around. That can provide some clues related to or reflecting their property ownership or the time in history.
Cheung Chau had long been a busy tiny hub for some foreign travelers!
Cheers
Tung
Fa Peng area, via Google Earth
The present day Fa Peng area could be viewed in 3D by google Earth also (link).