History of Fort Canning ⛰️ From Forbidden Hill to Bastion of Empire to Historic Park of Singapore |Johor Kaki Travels for Food

John Crawfurd, British Resident & Commandant of Singapore 1823 – 1826. Image credit: Wikipedia

John Crawfurd, the second British Resident and Commandant of Singapore visited Forbidden Hill in 1822 and recorded what he saw.


“The greater part of the west and northern side of the mountain is covered with the remains of the foundation of buildings, some composed of baked brick of good quality. Among these ruins, the most distinguished are those seated on a square terrace, of about forty feet to a side, near the summit of the hill. On the edge of this terrace, we find fourteen large blocks of stand-stone; which, from the hole in each, had probably been the pedestals of as many wooden-posts which supported the building. This shows us, at once, that the upper part of the structure was of perishable materials; an observation which, no doubt, applies to the rest of the buildings as well as to this.


Within the square terrace is a circular inclosure, formed of rough sand-stones, in the centre of which is a well, or hollow, which very possibly contained an image; for I look upon the building to have been a place of worship, and from its appearance, in all likelihood, a temple of Buddha. I venture farther to conjecture, that the other relics of antiquity on the hill, are the remains of monasteries of the priests of this religion.


Another terrace, on the north declivity of the hill, nearly of the same size, is said to have been the burying-place of Iskandar Shah, King of Singapore. This is the prince whom tradition describes as having been driven from his throne by the Javanese, in the year 1252 of the Christian era, and who died at Malacca, not converted to the Mohammedan religion, in 1274; so that the story is probably apocryphal.Over the supposed tomb of Iskandar, a rude structure has been raised, since the formation of the new settlement, to which Mohammedans, Hindus, and Chinese, equally resort to do homage.It is remarkable, that many of the fruit-trees cultivated by the ancient inhabitants of Singapore are still existing, on the eastern side of the hill, after a supposed lapse of near six hundred years. Here we find the durian, the rambutan, the duku, the shaddock, and other fruit-trees of great size; and all so degenerated, except the two first, that the fruit is scarcely to recognised.”

[ Source: J. Crawford (1828) Journal of an embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China; exhibiting a view of the actual state of those kingdoms, Henry Colburn, London, pp. 45 – 47. ]

On the eastern foothills ran a freshwater stream. It provided drinking water and served as a defensive moat. There was also a spring here where the royal ladies bathed. The Singapura walls or “Old Line of Singapore” were aligned with the stream. The ruins of the old Singapura walls were demolished to make way for subsequent construction on the Forbidden Hill.

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