The Summer House, The Stone House, Kellett Manor [c.1901-c.1992]

The Summer House, The Stone House and Kellett Manor were all names for a building, or possibly succession of buildings, that stood on a site on the south side of Mount Kellett above Mount Kellett Road. This is the “dark side” of Mount Kellett, only captured in close-up photos as it’s not overlooked from any medium or long-range vantage points.

The Summer House, The Stone House and Kellett Manor occupied RBL 96 (1). The site was put up for public auction on 24^th April 1899 (2). I don’t know the result of the auction, but the earliest mention of the house itself I’ve come across is the 1902 listing of “The Stone House, Mount Kellett” as the residence of C.C. Sharp and O.D. Thomson (3). Just one year later its name had changed to “The Summer House” (4) and in 1904 the new name appeared in the first official Peak numbering exercise along with its official address - Number 67 on Mount Kellett Road (5).  In 1914 its name reverted to “The Stone House” although the address was unchanged (6). By 1924 the name had become “Kellett Manor” and the number changed from 67 to 185 (7).

The name “Kellett Manor” was retained until at least 1984 when A.I. Diamond, an Archivist with the PRO, visited and reported that it was then in a derelict and vandalized condition having been uninhabited since 1981. His notes and close-up photos are viewable online (8). Unfortunately, his handwritten comments around the photos are too blurred for me to read. He mentioned that the building had been much modified in comparison with an earlier photo, but unfortunately didn’t mention the date of that photo and it isn’t included in the file.  

The building is not there today, probably demolished when the site was included in the Sunshine Villas development at 48 Mount Kellett Road completed in 1996 (9).

1. GRS Reference File RID No. RF000128, Call No. PRO-REF-164, entitled “Smith, Horace Percy and The Stone House”. Viewable online by going to Government Records Service (grs.gov.hk) , then searching by the file name and then selecting “Library Holdings”.
2. Government Notification 217/1899 in Government Gazette.
3. Peak Directory in the 1902 Chronicle and Directory of China et al.
4. Peak Directory in the 1903 Chronicle and Directory of China et al.
5. Peak Renumbering Exercise of 18 March 1904, Government Notification 190/1904.
6. Peak Renumbering Exercise of 29 May 1914, Government Gazette 208/1914.
7. Peak Renumbering Exercise of 1 January 1924, Government Gazette 569/1923.
8. See (1) above.
9. Home Affairs Department Database of Private Buildings.