European House #12, Cheung Chau [????- ]

[Updated 24/11/25]

House #12 is one of the few houses for which we have no historic photos.  It lies below the top of Fa Peng on the east side, and cannot be seen from the west.  It faces southeast to the sea and Lamma Island.

From the HK Maps 1962 survey, it appears to have been a bungalow similar to #13 and #14 with a small cabin for domestic staff behind it.  

Today the site is occupied by Bethany Lodge, a holiday venue for Christian workers, making a trio with Bethany Cottage (17A) and Bethany House (17).  The modern building is part bungalow and part two storeys.  My feeling is that the two-storey reinforced concrete wrap-round is modern.  

One can discern flat concrete roofs common to the Cheung Chau villas and similar-sized windows to houses 13 and 14 in the bungalow part.

In the 1938 list of European owners of homes on Cheung Chau, a Mr Smyth is given as owner of House #12.  

Harold Smyth, a bachelor, had worked in China and grown to love it, and after retiring to England, decided to return to Hong Kong in 1932 and settle on Cheung Chau.  When the Japanese invaded in 1941, he was interned in Stanley Camp and after liberation lived in Kowloon.