Keep historic estate intact, adviser urges

The chairman of the government's advisory board on historic treasures called for both the mansion and gardens at Ho Tung Gardens on The Peak to be preserved.

Bernard Chan said saving only one part of the landmark property, built by legendary Jardines' comprador Sir Robert Ho Tung for his second wife, would mean the property was 'incomplete'.

The present owner, one of Ho Tung's granddaughters wants to knock down the 82-year-old mansion but has offered to keep the Chinese garden that surrounds it.

'I would prefer it if both could be preserved. I think the relationship between the two is quite intimate,' Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, said after a board meeting yesterday.

'Before I went to Ho Tung Gardens, I also thought it was just a garden, but it's not - it's a whole estate. So if you say one of the two no longer exists, it will be a lot less complete.' However, he said, that left the cost of keeping both sites to be addressed.

At yesterday's meeting the authors of two consultations on the historical and architectural values of Ho Tung Gardens presented their reports, commissioned by the Antiquities and Monuments Office.

Assistant professor Lee Ho-yin, director of the University of Hong Kong's architectural conservation programme and an author of one of the reports, said cultural heritage comprised both the tangible and intangible. 'If you don't have the estate to hold it, as an anchor point,' he said, referring to the mansion, 'the intangible will be lost very easily.'