The news of killings of J.B.D Edwards and two Malay SCs was stated in Strait Times, adding more numbers of killings in Sungei Siput. The planters and armed forces personnels became the main targets for bandits to achieve their goal. The paper cutting was given by Mr. Bill Ashby, UK.
The picture shows Ipoh New Town extending from the Kinta River in 1908. It was built on the padi fields of Datoh Panglima Kinta and as the new buildings were erected from the river towards Gopeng Road, block by block, replacing a number of extremely smelly pigsties.
The builder was Yau Tet Shin, miner, property owner and friend of E W Birch (The Resident of Perak). Wong Kap Soot, Yau Tet Shin’s long time business manager and member of the Ipoh Sanitary Board supported him in the endeavour.
The Ipoh New Town consisted of some 350 houses, with a new market, a mandarin school and theatre all included as anchor attractions. New Town mirrored the Old Town across the Kinta River, but on a well laid-out plan with fine, broad streets coupling with the main thoroughfares of Brewster Road and Hugh Low Street all the way to Gopeng Road and Tambun Road.
This old picture of the temple elders is said to hang in one of the Chinese cave temples in Gopeng Road, Ipoh. Does anyone know which temple please?
The picture of Humber Pulman was taken in Taiping during 1950s. It was a Standard Vanguard for Officers of the Command, who used having arrived by helicopter to travel around the area. Besides that, several armoured Scout Cars also used to escort the Humber Pulman during the visits.
Such a beauty! Dont you agree? Please drop by if you know about this car, registration 27BC24.
This photograph of what is said to be Captain Speedy’s Bungalow was taken when the building was under restoration a few years ago. Does anyone know what it is used for now, assuming the renovation is finished?
Captain Speedy was born in Meerut, India, in 1836 and named Tristam Charles Swayer Speedy. He was appointed as the Superintendent of Police of Penang in 1871 before becoming the Perak Chief of Police in 1873, the year when he was tasked with quelling the war between two Chinese Triads who were fighting over who had the rights over the tin mines.
A c1875 picture of the bungalow may be found here.
This photograph dates from the end of the war / January 1946 and was taken by a member of 656 squadron stationed at Ipoh aerodrome. It is of course the Perak Turf Club racecourse which was also used at that time as an extra landing place for the squadron’s Auster aircraft due to congestion on and damage to the aerodrome after the war.
As a green lung in our city it is pleasing to see that it is still with us.
The Turf Club in Ipoh has a long history, having started out in 1903 as the Ipoh Gymkana Club. However, By Kinta`s standards, the Ipoh Race Course was founded rather late. The Gopeng Gymkhana Club being founded in the late 1880`s and the Kinta Gymkhana Club at Batu Gajah in 1890.
Today both Gopeng and Kinta Clubs have long-since stopped racing and Ipoh reigns supreme in Perak horse racing circles.
The picture shows the Panglima Street, Ipoh around 1904. It was named after Datoh Panglima Kinta who originally owned the land that Ipoh is built on. In Perak, the elephants could be seen on the streets as they were used as a main carrier for both people and goods, particularly in the tin mines. Perak was the main exporter of the elephants to other Malay states in Malaya then.
Some time ago Jeya mentioned that it is still possible to visit a bucket dredge some 10Km from Batu Gajah on the Tanjung Tualang Road. This is dredge number TT5 and it is open to visitors for a small entrance fee. You may walk on the dredge to get a feel for its massive size (4,500 tonnes weight) and talk to the man behind the project Steven Ng who seems to spend most of his life there.
This dredge, a museum piece, the last in Perak and one of only 3 left in Malaysia was built in 1938 by W F Payne & Sons and worked the mining pools in the Kinta vally for 44 years. It stopped working in 1983 when the price of tin dropped to a level where it was no longer an economic proposition. Today it sits in a man-made pond at Desa Perlombongan along the Tanjong Tualong Road and is well signposted.
Unfortunately the machinery no longer runs, but if you want to get an idea about how the dredge worked, click here and you will find the 11 different operations that took place on a dredge of this sort.
While many will argue that this is not heritage that depends a lot on one’s point of view. Here we have the logo brightening up a really dull steel shutter in a heritage building and demonstrating a family’s pride in what they do (books for education), their family name and the country to which they belong. Perhaps we could do with more of such pride in our community, but looking around at the city, pride in our home town and its surrounds is obviously in very short supply.
On the heritage front, this logo represents the family’s heritage – a business built up by hard work over the years, to make a future for themselves, their children and those who follow them. What will you leave behind for those that follow you? Will it be more than your forefathers left you or less?
Well of course it may be more in terms of financial wealth, property ownership and other material things we all crave for, but what about that other heritage – clean rivers, thriving wildlife, untouched hills, pollution-free air to breathe and more? There is no doubt about the answer to that question is there?
But it is not too late because if each one of you got back that pride and did your bit for the community, much (but not all) could be salvaged for future generations. Soon it will be altogether too late!
Think about it!
This little group of buildings in Belfield Street, Old Town, Ipoh is very reminiscent of the days when budding entrepreneurs bought a single plot of land and had their own ideas created into a shop-house. Individuality was the hallmark in those days not like the vast housing developments today with their rows and rows of identical little boxes.
Pity about the nasty, white, square and tasteless building to the left.
Hugh Low Street taken from rise, near the Registar of Motor Vehicles office in 1887. The first bus service was started from this street and Laxamana Road to Gopeng in 1910. The pioneer was Yeop Abdul Rani Idris who used a single bus to run his business. However, in 1912, the business collapsed due to economic factors.
Most tourists that traverse Old Town make a point of photographing the Birch Memorial Clock Tower, just as this photographer has done in the past. But searching for a different view this time he came across this little side-lane and this is what he got to take home to remind him of Ipoh.
What a pity that Ipoh, once lauded as the cleanest town in Malaya, no longer seems to maintain the buildings, pavements and lanes.
Sunday is a good day to follow the published heritage walk around Old Town, Ipoh as there is not too much traffic and very few cars parked to obstruct the view of the heritage buildings. But a word of warning, do watch where you step because, as the photographs show, quite apart from having to walk in single file in some places (see “There it was GONE” below) the modern paved walkways have not survived as well as the old buildings around them .
So do be careful where you walk when you are admiring some exciting feature across the road or taking that dream photo that you will treasure for life. The alternative could be a thoroughly spoilt Sunday and the inconvenience that would cause.
If you walk past the front of Lam Looking building, nothing much seems to be happening, but pause a moment and you will hear the mighty hammering of hacking tools and when they take a break – voices. Could it be that something is cooking inside the building? Now before you move on, look up and right at the top. Something plain grey has been added. What could it be?
Well, a look at this second picture, taken inside the top floor, will tell you that they have rebuilt the top of the building with red brick – Yes, work has started and they are preserving the facia and internal walls.
And as the above pictures show, it has started with a vengeance, there is a mass of building materials on site, the floors have been stabilised with steel and wooden props and they are removing all the old rendering, but keeping the original brickwork.
But there is also a lot of new brickwork as well and much more to follow. but it looks as if Lam Looking will live to serve the people of Ipoh again in one way or another, just as its new owner said it would. That is great news.
However the job will take time and the workers say two years, it could well be more, but at least we know it will stand again a proud symbol of a grand old Chinaman, Towkay Lam Look Ing.
Ipoh has many of these shop-sign pillars lining the 5-foot way, more we believe than any of the other Malaysian cities, but it is very unusual to see them in any other langusge but Chinese. However this pair, relics of Ipoh’s Colonial past remain with us to remind us that at one time the two languages you were most likely to hear in the town were Chinese and English.
Does anyone know of another pair like this?
It is very sad to see that the recent renovation of this building has included enclosing the 5 foot walkway that was designed to provide shelter for passing pedestrians from the scorching sun and the pouring rain. Has the owner recently bought the pavement from the council or simply stolen it and if it is the latter what are our Law Enforcement Officers doing about it.
You may wonder why I am concerned, but the problem is that they have just not taken over the walkway, but more importantly forced people to walk on the narrow strip of pavement that remains, in single file, thereby putting young children at risk on this very busy road.
Would anyone like to explain to me how this can happen. Could it just be a matter of using one’s cents?
One of our supporters was having a walk around Old Town with his camera last Sunday. He stopped by the Birch Clock Tower to admire the beautiful paintwork on the OCBC building, rejoicing in the fact that this grand old building, built by the Straits Trading Company in 1906/1907 is still with us.
But then a sole pedestrian appeared and it is quite clear that he did not care too much for OCBC’s efforts in maintaining the building!
As discussions about the rights and wrongs of learning English rage unabated, perhaps it is time to learn a useful phrase “to mind your P’s and Q,s” which means to behave oneself in public. Maybe this man should learn to mind his P’s.
This little wooden hut, still standing a few metres off the Changkat Batu Gajah Road is the last in a row of similar huts where the married police officers lived during the Malayan Emergency. No fences, gatehouses or special security, just open to anyone who walked by. Very different to the homes of the miners, planters and others for whom they were responsible for guarding.
This particular hut was the home of Police Lieutenant Tom Turnbull, his wife and three young children from 1954 to 1957. Two of the children were born in the Batu Gajah hospital. At the time he held the appointment of Group Commander Area Security Unit, Batu Gajah, Perak. Tom has been very helpful with providing photographs and articles for ipohWorld and we are very grateful to him. His story can be found at http://www.ipohworld.org/search8/result.asp?strid=2949.
This postcard dates from around 1935 and shows the Hugh Low Bridge as most people still call it today. At one time when Hugh Low, as a British Colonial, was out of fashion it was known as the Kinta Bridge, but the name never really caught on. Anyway, those who cross the bridge regularly will know that the council have now erected a temporary Bailey Bridge alongside it in preparation to rebuild a “better looking” bridge at a cost of, we believe RM50 million of taxpayers money. I do hope that figure is wrong because as far as we know the existing bridge is still sound and has years of life left in it.
Historically, the Hugh Low Bridge was first completed as a wooden bridge in 1890 and opened for wheeled traffic to Gopeng. The wooden bridge was replaced with an iron bridge when Yau Tet Shin’s New Town was built in 1907. The iron bridge was then widened in 1930 to take the ever increasing traffic, mostly non motorised.
Now the heritage buff will mourn the loss of this historic bridge, but should we all not be mourning the decision to spend so much in these difficult times. Let us hope that the rumour is wrong and the new bridge will cost a fraction of the figure being bandied about.
But anyway, feast your eyes on this old picture which shows the Bridge and God of Prosperity Temple and the People’s Park as it used to be. Memories are made of this!
This genuine Kinta Town Board notice from 1956 or thereabouts is nothing less than bizarre. What on earth did one do with sticks and stones? However 5 cents for a bath and free toilets sounds like a pretty good deal. If you have any suggestions about the sticks and stones, please keep them to yourself. We really do not want to share them! Nonethe less, please feel free to comment on the unusual notice. We always welcome your input.
