Fool on the Hill

The English House, Marco Pierre White’s rather eccentrically embellished dining establishment at Mohamed Sultan Road may have shut its doors early last year, but its soul hasn’t left the pair of shophouses that had been its home for alomst seven years. A peek into the property, will reveal that much of what provided The English House with its feel, is still quite intact. This includes it…

I had a chance to visit the Southern Star, a 112 metre LOA Diving Support Vessel constructed in 2017, when it was in Singapore, fresh from a voyage through the Strait of Hormuz. Fitted out to provide support for subsea operations involving saturation diving, the vessel has a highly redundant DPS3 dynamic positioning system that permits it to keep station in heavy seas and a 150 tonne capacity…

Next on Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets #SLASecretSpaces is a visit to the former Command House on 25 July 2026.Designed by Frank W. Brewer and completed in 1938 as Flagstaff House, the large mansion was the first of an intended three residences that were to have been built to accommodate the commanders of the armed services and their families. Flagstaff House, the residence of the the…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets Exploring the Past, Reimagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties  Held in collaboration with the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26 returns after the Singapore Heritage Festival with a visit to the beautifully laid out Adam Park estate. [Registration Opens on 25 May 2026 at 6…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets Exploring the Past, Reimagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties  Held in collaboration with the Singapore Land Authority and Kada, Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26’s takes us next to the slopes of Mount Erskine to rediscover the former St Andrew’s Mission Hospital turned Medical Store, Outpatient Dispensary, and…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets Exploring the Past, Reimagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties  Held in collaboration with the Singapore Land Authority and the Danish Seamen’s Church, Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26’s next discovery promises an elevated experience on the slopes of Mount Faber. With its “blood and bandages” appearance and an…

The 15th of February 2026 will mark the 84th anniversary of the Fall of Singapore. The date in 1942, marked an inauspicious start to year of the horse for members of the Chinese population, who would be subject to unimaginable atrocities in the weeks ahead. Fear and uncertainty, a lack of food, disease, poor nutrition, poor living conditions and a lack of vaccines were to be features of the three…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets Exploring the Past, Reimagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties  Discovering the former Bukit Timah StationThis visit is being organised in collaboration with the Singapore Land Authority and LHN Space Optimisation as part of the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26 series of tours. [Registration opens on 1 Feb 2026 at…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept SecretsExploring the Past, Re-imagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties Tucked away in a quiet corner of Dover Road, an area associated with educational establishments, Medway Park, escapes the attention of many. The value of the collection of late colonial era residences is the link that it provides to the area’s discarded military past, a…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept SecretsExploring the Past, Re-imagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26 contnues with a visit on 10 January 2026 to 179 and 450 Piccadilly. The two buildings are amongst a number of conserved structures associated with the former RAF Seletar / Seletar Air Base marking the site of the Royal…

Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept SecretsExploring the Past, Re-imagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties Discovering a Sembawang Arts and Crafts Inspiration20 Dec 2025  The second tour in the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets 2025/26 series will provide an exclusive peek into an Arts and Craft Movement inspired residence. The residence belongs to a large cluster…

Exploring the Past, Re-imagining the Future of Singapore’s Historical State Properties  Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets State Property Tours are back—with a focus on adaptive reuse. Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept SecretsWhen I first embarked on my collaboration with the Singapore Land Authority on the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of tours back in 2017, I was…

The Karim Family Foundation’s acquisition and careful restoration of the now resplendent House of Tan Yeok Nee (see also: The Last of the Grand Teochew Mansions), is truly a gift to Singapore. The 1880s house is now a unique example of a traditional southern-Chinese-style courtyard house here in Singapore and boasts an array of exquisite decorative craftsmanship. Gilded wooden carvings,…

I had the privilege of showing the BBC’s Carmen Roberts around the Battlebox in August. This was for a segment of ‘The Travel Show’ for which she came back to Singapore—the country of her birth for an episode related to Singapore’s 60th anniversary of Independence and the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The Battlebox, an underground command bunker located in Fort Canning…

Syonan Station From a New Straits Times article published in 2011. As a boy, H.A. Patrick Sinnappoo was sent to the island to work as a translator. He tells Shanti Gunaratnam about his years there, witnessing the good, bad and ugly that were committed during the Japanese occupation. “I saw a man pacing up and down, and when he told me that he was waiting for someone to arrive, I left him on…