HOME FROM HOME

Charlotte Shalgosky (Carla Sommers)

The story behind Myanmar's luxurious colonial hillside hideaways.

It is said that an Englishman’s home is his castle. Six thousand miles from England it was in the quiet northern hill-stations and bustling southern ports of Myanmar (Burma) that the British built imposing properties reflecting their English heritage, now lost in the shadows of time. Almost two centuries ago, far from England’s green and pleasant lands the British colonial explorers came across a hot, dusty country teeming with oil, gems and hardwoods. Within fifty decades the Empire’s entrepreneurs had fast established themselves in a land that was then known as Burma. Before long, Burma - now today’s Myanmar, was - unhappily - annexed to neighbouring India, and came under the control of the British Raj, and home to hundreds of expatriates including Europeans, Indians, Nepalis and Chinese.

On the cool and densely-wooded hills of Kalaw and Maymyo in a region known as Upper Burma, the British colonials built brick cottages, mock-Tudor manor houses, and narrow gauge Victorian railways - the likes of which would not have been out of place in the depths of Oxfordshire.  They planted pine trees and strawberries, and named their houses "Good-land’s" , "Upper Fold" or "Candacraig".  Some properties were more like stately mansions, others were typical hill-station bungalows. In the Southern cities of Yangon (Rangoon) and Moulmein (Mawlamyaing), they added elegant hotels and swanky bachelor lodgings - known as ‘chummeries’ - all were built to incorporate unknown luxuries such as running water, and brick fireplaces in the chilly mountains.

Extensive roads and rail links were built, a flotilla of steamers plied the Irrawaddy River; by the 1900’s, Burma had taken its place in the international trading world.  Nearly a century before, conditions had been far from luxurious. Those settlers who arrived in the port of Yangon were aghast at the swampy conditions and rampant disease. However by the late 1850’s a British

traveller wrote: "where a dreary boggy waste of ground once existed, now arose a row of palatial edifices on the strand, with an excellent broad roadway on the waterside, extending fully a mile…"

Gentrification came at a cost to the local Burmans - who were unceremoniously relocated to squatter camps in usually, squalid conditions. The job of the transformation of Yangon had originally been given to a certain ‘Dr. Montgomerie’ in the mid 1800’s. Montgomerie had been involved in Singapore’s planning, he dutifully drew up a grid plan with public drainage, shady walkways and a promenade along the river, but his services were ultimately ignored in favour of those provided by a Bengal Engineer called Lt. Alexander Fraser.

Fraser undertook the reclamation of the marshy land and on it built his own magnificent city, naming the major avenues after favoured British officials. In 1904, the French scholar Lajonquiere, referring to the British expansion affirmed:

"Yangon is certainly one of the finest jewels in their crown…In the upper districts, begin the chalets surrounded by lawns and the shaded avenues where British colonialists like to arrange their homes..." After the devastating fires of 1855 and 1857, Yangon’s central commercial

district was deemed suitable only for brick buildings.  Today these same structures still stand, reflecting the great British passion for ‘beaurocratic byzantine’ brickwork, exemplified in the

magnificent blood-red Law Courts, and General Post Office.  Lajonquiere was, however, deeply critical of this impromptu imposition of colonial design: "The British seem not to want to harmonize their architectural style…Some of the buildings built on the major thoroughfare seek to be grandiose but are only heavy and odd-looking in this sunny land".

No city in South East Asia had seen such large-scale public architecture, turn-of-the-century Yangon now reflected parts of the City of London, Shanghai or Delhi.  Lajonquiere’s negative comments were not altogether unfounded, European house design seemed to change every decade, and some of them ended up a mish-mash of various styles.  Homes borrowed Burmese features such as upper wooden verandahs and ground floors shaded by wooden lattices, this was combined with the Victorian-Gothic passion for turrets, or mock-Tudor painted timbers, surrounded by exquisite gardens.  In her book Picturesque Burma, of 1897, Mrs Hart writes: "Beyond the town, are the bungalows of the English, set in the midst of park-like gardens of tamarind, peepul and palm trees… "

On the broad shady avenue along the Yangon River, known as Strand Road, the Armenian Sarkie brothers built a delightful hotel to cater for the growing number of European visitors and traders.  The Strand Hotel became one of the region’s luxury residences of the time, similar to the E&O in Penang, Raffles in Singapore and Oriental in Bangkok, and in November 2001, it will celebrate its centennial.  Along Strand Road today remain the elegant offices of the old Customs House, the former Grindlays bank and the magnificently colonnaded District Court building - resembling Selfridges in London, in style and sheer, unparalleled grandeur.

In Pansodan Street, formerly Phayre Street - named after the first colonial administrator, the rows of imposing edifices continue the length of the kilometre-long avenue; the Inland Waterways building with its anchor motifs, the yellow-painted telegraph offices, an old fire station; many are dated around 1903.On Bogyoke Aung San Street are a string of pastel-painted 1930’s art deco cinemas and now crumbling apartment blocks built just before WWII. In such an atmosphere of history it is easy to imagine the trams running outside Sule pagoda and in front of the Strand Hotel.

With summer heat in Yangon unbearable, the cold-blooded Europeans left their suburban bungalows and retreated to their little cottage hideaways in Maymyo (now called Pyin U Lwin) and Kalaw where they could catch their breath and enjoy the cool altitudes.  Here, in the shade of the pine woods, by the gentle mountain streams, they could eat fresh strawberries and cream, listen to the nearby church bells, close their eyes and think of their homeland….and almost believe they were back in England's lush green pastures.