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| Ossuary opened in 1983 |
In 1969 the Director of Urban Service issued details of 460 graves which were to be exhumed from The Colonial Cemetery during 1970. All remains not claimed and removed before the date of exhumation were to be placed in an ossuary which was to be built within the cemetery - or otherwise disposed of as the Director thought fit.
The original ossuary was constructed in the south-east of the cemetery in Section 40. Individual graves on this side of the cemetery were sited in tiers rising up the hillside with views to the race track and harbour. The perfect location - at least it would have been had it not been for the Aberdeen Tunnel Project which loomed large later in the 1970s.
The possibility of a tunnel linking Aberdeen to the south side of the island had been talked about for some years. In the 1970s it became a reality and that beautiful hillside with its tiers of graves was torn to pieces as tunnelling commenced between Happy Valley and Wong Chuk Hang.
The Aberdeen Tunnel Project resulted in the exhumation of over 3000 graves plus the demolition of the original ossuary in Section 40. Monuments and graves with headstones in the affected sections were to be re-sited in other parts of the cemetery, whilst graves with no headstones were to be placed in a brand new ossuary. Building the ossuary was scheduled for the final stages of the project and pending completion the exhumed remains were stored in boxes within a bone store. The work was finally completed in 1983.
Since the 1980s several wonderful projects have been completed within the cemetery by academics and researchers:
a) Solomon Bard's project undertaken between October 1989 and March 1991 concentrated on military graves.
b) Patricia Lim's project in the 2000s resulted in her book "Forgotten Souls" detailing the social history behind burials within the Colonial Cemetery (now known as The Hong Kong Cemetery).
c) Ken Nicholson's architectural look at "The Happy Valley".
As far as I am aware the one huge gap in all research completed to date relates to the many thousands of souls buried without a headstone. I am not an academic neither am I an author but having Asperger's Syndrome means that I thrive when indexing information. I was doing this long before the age of personal computers and my first index for the Colonial Cemetery consisted of flimsy paper slips very carefully filed in alphabetical order within many shoe boxes. In retirement information from those slips was transferred to computer along with information from a myriad of other sources.
As a researcher specialising in the former Colonial Cemetery I am often contacted by families serarching for the graves of family members who died in Hong Kong. The most poignant are from the children of military families searching for the grave of a baby brother or sister who died in the 1930s or 1950s and who did not have a headstone.
Over the next few years I shall be posting the results of 30+ years research relating to those whose lives were not recorded for posterity on expensive headstones - the ordinary everyday people, even those who were "down & out".
The ossuary is a good place to start because thanks to the Aberdeen Tunnel Project these souls had plaques provided by the Urban Council. The 1970s project was a huge undertaking so it is not surprising to find that many errors crept into their recording of names and dates. By collating information from the ossuary plaque, cemetery records, burial records and a variety of other sources I hope to give these Lost Souls back their full names together with something of their background. My thanks goes to all USD staff who were involved in that project back in the 1970s and early 80s as I believe they did an excellent job under very difficult circumstances.
For administrative convenience I shall begin with the 280 occupants of Block B and will start posting details after Christmas. Please keep checking back for updates and if you think I can assist in tracing a "lost" burial please do not hesitate to contact me:
As a researcher specialising in the former Colonial Cemetery I am often contacted by families serarching for the graves of family members who died in Hong Kong. The most poignant are from the children of military families searching for the grave of a baby brother or sister who died in the 1930s or 1950s and who did not have a headstone.
Over the next few years I shall be posting the results of 30+ years research relating to those whose lives were not recorded for posterity on expensive headstones - the ordinary everyday people, even those who were "down & out".
The ossuary is a good place to start because thanks to the Aberdeen Tunnel Project these souls had plaques provided by the Urban Council. The 1970s project was a huge undertaking so it is not surprising to find that many errors crept into their recording of names and dates. By collating information from the ossuary plaque, cemetery records, burial records and a variety of other sources I hope to give these Lost Souls back their full names together with something of their background. My thanks goes to all USD staff who were involved in that project back in the 1970s and early 80s as I believe they did an excellent job under very difficult circumstances.
For administrative convenience I shall begin with the 280 occupants of Block B and will start posting details after Christmas. Please keep checking back for updates and if you think I can assist in tracing a "lost" burial please do not hesitate to contact me:
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