Moving pumping station to Flagstaff House will destroy heritage site
Ken Borthwick says the government is again showing its ignorance of the meaning of heritage conservation with plans to relocate a water station to the site of iconic Flagstaff House
When will they ever learn? Only a few years after permitting the destruction of the site, setting, landscape and meaning of the former marine police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui and removing the iconic grade one historic building Queen's Pier, the government is planning another outrage for a monument.
It plans to relocate the Harcourt Road water pumping station to a critical part of the site of Flagstaff House (now the Museum of Tea Ware), formerly the residence of the British military commanders in Hong Kong. It is the oldest Western building in Hong Kong, completed in 1846 for Major General G. C. D'Aguilar and located at the northernmost part of Hong Kong Park, formerly Victoria Barracks.
The proposal allows for the construction of the pumping station, partly underground, straddling the supporting slope of the monument and extending well into what was the original grounds, as enclosed there by a historic fortified wall. The wall features, at one corner, loopholes for defence by soldiers with muskets.
Inadequately described in the government's heritage assessment merely as an "old stone wall with holes in it", it might perhaps be Hong Kong's oldest surviving example of British military defences.
In addition, the proposal outrageously allows for the felling of 91 of the 135 trees on the slope and within the grounds of Flagstaff House and transplanting 26 others. To construct the underground part, a massive bored pile wall is planned, extending to within only a few metres of the house itself, and in that area there would be only shallow soil above the proposed pumping station, which is likely to prevent the growth of good replacement trees in that area.
The government and its heritage advisers appear blissfully ignorant of the fact that heritage conservation is also about the site, setting and environment of the historic building. Before the area was handed over from military use, the Victoria Barracks planning committee stated in their 1977 report on the development of the barracks that "the high public amenity value which the house and its grounds possess led the committee to decide that Flagstaff House and its grounds be preserved as a specialised museum in a park setting for the enjoyment of the public".