Hi Phil, thanks for posting these! It's quite a shocking difference from the past (and a little sad and barren, in my opinion). I did a bit more digging using old maps and aerial surveys, as well as Google Street View, and can add the following observations: -Aerial survey photos from 1949 show that the main house was already connected to the back house by a narrow (rooftop only?) walkway of sorts, probably installed when the original hip roof was replaced by a flat roof:
-And an overlay of the 1966 map by the Land and Survey Office shows that apart from the large L-shaped building on the left, the other three buildings are very much the original ones, just buried under new windows, new paintwork, and goodness knows how many interior alterations:
-It also finally occurred to me to check older versions of Street View, and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the pavilion and its lovely jade-green tiled roof survived all the way into at least 2011, when the property was run as a different elderly home. Some time between 2011 and 2016, the previous elderly home became Wing Kin, the pavilion was demolished, and the front gate and boundary wall were redecorated. Since then, it looks like half of the trees have been chopped down as well, including the massive one to the left of the main building, which would have been about a century old. So it seems that many of the notable changes to the front view only occurred in the last decade or so. Such a shame, when you think about how long they lasted.
Comments
Compare to this image. …
Compare to this image.
Massive difference
Hi Phil, thanks for posting these! It's quite a shocking difference from the past (and a little sad and barren, in my opinion). I did a bit more digging using old maps and aerial surveys, as well as Google Street View, and can add the following observations:
-Aerial survey photos from 1949 show that the main house was already connected to the back house by a narrow (rooftop only?) walkway of sorts, probably installed when the original hip roof was replaced by a flat roof:
-And an overlay of the 1966 map by the Land and Survey Office shows that apart from the large L-shaped building on the left, the other three buildings are very much the original ones, just buried under new windows, new paintwork, and goodness knows how many interior alterations:
-It also finally occurred to me to check older versions of Street View, and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the pavilion and its lovely jade-green tiled roof survived all the way into at least 2011, when the property was run as a different elderly home. Some time between 2011 and 2016, the previous elderly home became Wing Kin, the pavilion was demolished, and the front gate and boundary wall were redecorated. Since then, it looks like half of the trees have been chopped down as well, including the massive one to the left of the main building, which would have been about a century old. So it seems that many of the notable changes to the front view only occurred in the last decade or so. Such a shame, when you think about how long they lasted.