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3 The Rise and Fall of the Hong Kong Cemetery
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
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In the early nineteenth century, European cemetery gardens tended to bear a resemblance to country estate landscapes with naturalistic copses of woodland, serpentine paths and sweeping areas of lawn. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, many cemeteries adopted a more ‘Loudonesque’ approach of simple and efficient grid layouts. However, the differences between the two styles of cemetery garden design were not necessarily clear-cut and many cemeteries had elements of both. Furthermore, Loudon’s design principles were interpreted according to prevailing fashions, local cultural traditions and personal tastes of cemetery managers and designers. How were these Western cemetery design principles applied in the new British colony of Hong Kong and, in particular, to the Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley? The rise from graveyard to cemetery garden In the early years of the British Colony of Hong Kong, the Royal Engineers were responsible for construction of the basic infrastructure such as roads, culverts and bridges. Therefore, it is most likely that the land granted by the Surveyor General for the Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley (formerly called the Protestant Graveyard then the Colonial Cemetery) was also formed by the Royal Engineers. Loudon’s cemetery design book was published in 1843, two years before the cemetery was opened. There is no evidence to indicate that Loudon’s guidelines became design specifications for the new cemetery. However, the simplicity and military-like efficiency of a ‘Loudonesque’ cemetery design was an appropriate response to the urgent need to establish a cemetery that could cope with the high mortality rates among the garrison population. The earliest known image of the cemetery is a sketch made in 1845, the same year the cemetery was established, by the military surveyor, Lieutenant T. B. Collinson, of the Royal Engineers. Collinson’s sketch records the view from a hill above Causeway Bay looking west. Visible in the centre of the sketch is A garden cemetery and monumental decoration afford the most convincing tokens of a nation’s progress in civilisation and in the arts. John Strang1 3The Rise and Fall of the Hong Kong Cemetery THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HONG KONG CEMETERY The Happy Valley 26 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HONG KONG CEMETERY Happy Valley with the cemetery and newly-built funeral chapel which was annotated as the ‘New Grave Yard’.2 The area that later became the horse racetrack is shown as agricultural land. Fig. 3.1 Collinson’s 1845 sketch of Hong Kong Island’s north coast with funeral chapel circled. Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Archives. Happy Valley was selected as the site of the new cemetery because it was of sufficient size to accommodate the growing demand for burial space as well as a sufficient distance from the urban area to prevent it being overrun by new development like the first European cemeteries in Wanchai. But there was a third very practical reason for selecting that specific location in Happy Valley — geology. The landform of Happy Valley can be divided into three basic geological zones.3 The first is the steep-sided hills that enclose the valley on three sides. The hills are composed of major intrusive igneous rocks, categorised as mainly medium-grained granite. This is a very common rock type in Hong Kong. It is susceptible to weathering and erosion and typically forms steep gradients with relatively thin soil cover. The second geological zone is the broad, flat valley floor (corresponding to the position of the racetrack) which comprises superficial deposits of alluvium, consisting of clay, silt, sand and gravels. The third geological zone is the area occupied by the cemetery gardens on the lower slopes, between the first two zones, comprising superficial debris flow deposits: unsorted sand, gravel, cobbles and boulders. The influence that these different geological zones have had over time on the settlement pattern and cultural landscape of Happy Valley is significant. Before Hong Kong became a British colony, the fertile flat land of Happy Valley, or Wong Nei Chung (literally: ‘yellow mud stream’) as it used to be called, supported a number of paddy fields cultivated by the villagers who had settled [44.222.116.199] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:24 GMT) 27 The Rise and Fall of the Hong Kong Cemetery THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HONG KONG CEMETERY at the head of the valley. When the British colony was established in 1841 there was little available flat land and the Happy Valley farmland was taken...