Tymon Mellor: Tucked away behind rows of red and white Victorian houses, at the end of the crosshatched street of Exhibition Road, lies The Royal Geographical Society. Whilst Lowther Lodge has been the home of the RGS since 1912, visitors are ushered into their new extension, the Foyle Reading Room. Galvanised steel frames and large glass walls strike a modern […]
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Tymon Mellor: With Britain’s acquisition of Kowloon under the Peking Convention in 1860, new maps were required for the territory. The Public Works Department (PWD) did not have any surveyors experienced in map making, their previous experience being limited to the setting out of building lots. It would fall to the military, in the form of the Royal Engineers to […]
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Tymon Mellor: In the early 1930s, a small mining operation was underway near Lok Ma Chau for wolframe, antimony, silver, gold and tin. The mine was unsuccessful in the commercial exploitation of minerals and the owners consequently lost their investments. The location of the mine has never been identified but the parties involved are well documented. This article describes the […]
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Tymon Mellor: We take for granted that when we turn a tap on clean water will flow. However, for the majority of Hong Kong’s colonial history, there were water shortages and supply restrictions. This was not a result of poor policy decisions but of changing circumstances, financial limitations and geographical constraints, and unlike other major conurbations, Hong Kong has no […]
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Tymon Mellor: The question was, “Who is Charles L Shank and what was his connection to the Shek Lai Pui Reservoir?”. A rather open question, but one that has led to an interesting journey. The questioner had acquired a large format book with 122 professional photographs of pre-war Hong Kong construction sites. Sample photographs provided documented the construction of the […]
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Tymon Mellor: With the rapidly increasing population in the post war Hong Kong, the availability of fresh water once more became a major problem. The poor financial situation had limited the territory’s options to overcome this, but after much discussion work commenced on Tai Lam Chung Reservoir in 1952. Before construction was complete, it was clear additional supplies would still […]
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Tymon Mellor: Mining is always a high risk enterprise, but in the case of the Lam Tsuen lead mines, it was compounded by remote terrain, objecting villagers and corrupt officials. This is the story of the lead mines on the Lam Tsuen river at Ng Tung Chai, near Tai Po. After the Second World War, interest in mining picked up […]
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Tymon Mellor: The new colony of Hong Kong was built on a Christian background with arrival of the western military and merchants. The territory became a base for missionaries who provided schooling, hospitals and religious services and the opportunity to spread the word into China. One of these missionaries was a young Italian priest, Simeone Volonteri who from 1862 would […]
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Tymon Mellor: If Government documents are to be believed, the inspiration for the Plover Cove Scheme came from the Director of Water Supplies, Mr T O Morgan while swimming in the sea at Plover Cove[i]. His idea was to convert the sea inlet into a fresh water reservoir by damming the inlet, pumping out the sea water and impounding fresh […]
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Tymon Mellor: On the 24th May, 1843 Lieutenant Thomas Bernard Collinson, RE boarded the Mount Stewart Elphinstone[1] with a detachment of sappers and miners, two civilian clerks of works and three works foremen, who were bound for the new colony of Hong Kong. Collinson had been appointed by the Board of Ordnance to produce a detailed map of the new […]
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