Singapore House

By 1835, Europeans were planting nutmeg and other spices on a commercial scale north and west of the town. However, Much of the forest, particularly in Tanglin, had already been cleared by Chinese squatter gambier and pepper planters who felled the trees surrounding their plots for firewood to boil the gambier leaves in order to extract its commercial product. When the soil was exhausted, they moved to virgin land and this process of continual shifting led to the clearing of large areas of forest. J T Thompson, government surveyor, 1841-1853, observed that "The district of Tanglin in the beginning of 1843 consisted of barren looking hills covered with short brushwood and lallang".

One of the first Europeans to move into the country was Dr Thomas Oxley, the colony surgeon. In about 1837 he acquired 173 acres and formed Killiney estate, described in the 1840s as "the finest nutmeg garden". About the same time, William Cuppage, an officer in the postal service, occupied Emerald Hill, and Charles Carnie, a businessman, built the first house in Cairnhill in 1840. Soon other Europeans were moving to "country situations" in the nearby districts of Claymore and Tanglin.

By about 1860, the nutmeg trees succumbed to a blight caused by a species of beetle. The estates, which by now stretched from Pasir Panjang to Adam Road, through Tanglin, Claymore and Bukit Timah Road, gradually failed. Some owners retained their holdings and erected houses for rental. Cuppage, for example, built Fern Cottage circa 1850 as his residence and rented out the first house he had built, Erin Lodge, on Emerald Hill. His son-in-law, Edwin Koek, added Claregrove on purchasing the entire estate after his father-in-law’s death in 1872. When George Garden Nichol offered his 150 acre Sri Menanti estate for sale in 1859 there was already a house on the estate. Other owners sold their estates which were then parcelled out in building lots and resold by their new proprietors. The process was continual, and the land was subsequently further sub-divided into even smaller lots. By the 1870s, nearly all of the nutmeg plantations had been transformed into large, pleasant and exclusive residential suburbs.

The houses that stood on the wooded and undulating hills of Tanglin and Claymore between 1850 and 1880 were named after the estates of their European owners and many of the names survive to this day as road and place names - Tyersall, Chatsworth, Ardmore, Dalvey, Irwell Bank, Orange Grove and Cairnhill. A network of roads was formed along the original plantation carriageways or along the boundaries. Grange Road, Dalvey Road, Emerald Hill Road, Scotts Road, Duxton Hill, Oxley Road, Princep Street and Spottiswoode Park Road, to name a few, were roads which originated in this way.

Thomas Oxley’s nutmeg estate provides a good example of what transpired after the failure. The land lay within an area bounded by orchard road, Grange road Leonie hill road, valley road and Tank road. Eventually In 1850, Oxley began to dispose of his land in lots. By 1862, there were 38 houses within the estate, mostly along St Thomas Walk and the area between Killiney and Oxley Roads. By 1880, a network of roads was completed - the present Somerset Road, Devonshire Road, Exeter Road, St Thomas Walk, Eber Road Dublin Road, Lloyd Road and Oxley Road. Oxley Drive was a private driveway that led up Oxley’s Hill where there were five houses: Pavilion, Bargany house, Bargany Lodge, Killiney Bungalow and Killiney House, Oxley’s own residence

Billy Chen
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