Marine Lot 122 [????- ] | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Marine Lot 122 [????- ]

Approximate location of Marine Lot 122, when this section of Hennessy Road was the seafront. The lot extended back to Wanchai Road.

Photos that show this place

1915
1918
1919

Comments

The "approximate location" shown above turns out to be the correct location. The lot is the strip of land adjacent to and east of the open land where the baseball courts are. It runs from Hennessy Road back to Wanchai Road.

Though it's now a long way from the sea, I was surprised to find the land is still referred to as M.L. (Marine Lot) 122 in the Street Index. That document gives the addresses on the lot as:

  • 314-324 Hennessy Road
  • 1-3 On Lok Lane
  • 218-220 Wanchai Road
Regards, David

Thanks, David. I certainly haven't done an exhaustive comparison and may be wrong, but it is a blessing that most of the Marine and Inland Lot numbers seem to have remained fixed and give a template of old Hong Kong, even though the street names and numbering may have changed, to say nothing of the landscape.

Jill

Dear David,

You are a glutton fo work.

Thanks for going back on this again. But I am now somewhat mystified as I thought the long correspondence at http://gwulo.com/node/6098 settled the fact that 98a and b were on this Lot.

moddsey had an Olson at the Lot in 1915. 

There also seems to be some confusion as to whether  I had confused ML122 and ML111. Several years ago when I tracked down the site of 98a and b with the Government Info people they gave me ML122 as the lot number for the address. Now it seems from your latest that 98 was not on the lot but further up or down the road.

While I am not equipped to agree or disagree with anybody I do know that according to death certs which I hold  my grest grandfather and great grandmother  died at 98A and 98B. One in 1915 and one in 1918. I also know Charles Olson lived in 98B at some stage also.

My interest in the place ends when the building, or buildings, became the head office of C.E.Warren as part of the settlement Charles Warren made with the Olson family when the company's offices in Des Voeux Road had to be sold in 1921.(See Dreams Dissolve at www.thehongkonglegacy.com). Again thanks for all your help.

Sean

Hi Sean,

The street numbers I mentioned above were just to show where the lot is on today's maps. Many of Hong Kong's streets have been re-numbered over the years, and sometimes more than once, so the street numbers for buildings on this lot were very likely different back in the 1910s.

Regards, David.

Thanks for the clarification David.

Sean

David,

In case others need to search for lot numbers corresponding to old street addresses, it seems that the land registry use the 1936 Street Index to help them trace this information. Digging into my correspondence of 2007 I have come across a nugget from the Land Registry, forwarded to me by Sean, and for which I claim no credit. At the time, we were trying to pinpoint the addresses used by our common forebears. The address 98A Wanchai Road was used by my father and his brothers as their private one, when writing back to their school in England in 1926. The Land Registry writes as follows:

The earliest edition of the Street Index kept by us is the 1936 edition. We learnt from this Street Index of 1936 edition that 33 Caine Road and 98A Wanchai Road were formerly assigned to Sub-section 1 of Section B of Inland Lot no. 1086 and Section A of Marine Lot no. 122 respectively.

The current land registry gives seven entries for M.L. 122 under the heading of ‘On Lok Lane’, as you say. M.L. 122  s.A   is given as the  Lee Cheong Building 利昌大廈. In brackets it says  “see also Wan Chai Road”.  Does this current M.L. 122 Section A tally at all with what might have been 98A Wanchai Road in the early and mid-20th century?

Jill

 

Hi Jill,

Thanks for the extra information. I'll summarise what we've got so far:

We know that in 1912, 96 & 98 Wanchai Road were at ML 111.

And in 1936, 98A Wanchai Road was at ML 122.

Also that the Jurors List for 1915 shows a John Olson at 98A Wanchai Road.

My guess is that the Wanchai Road houses were re-numbered between 1912 and 1915, and that the 98A known to the Olson and Warren families was at ML 122.

Some time between 1936 and 2013 the houses have been re-numbered again (at least once!), and now the houses on ML122 are 218-220 Wanchai Road.

Regards, David

David,

By January 1910 the location of the CE Warren & Co. hardware factory was 100-108 Wanchai Road. I should have thought that 96 and 98 would have also been created by then – maybe in 1909? I haven’t seen the original application for the cleaning of human hair relating to 96 and 98 Wanchai Road in 1912, given as ML 111. What is the source for that? At least we now know that no. 98 is a different property from 98A or 98B. 

In her post on 98 Wanchai Road, Patricia noted the absence of 96 and 98 from the Victoria Rate Books of the 1880s. I found that 98 and 100 were still absent from the 1894-5 Rate Book, but wasn’t able to check 1900-1910. 

ML 122 is divided into Sections A, B, C, D, of which Section A is the largest. On the page that Patricia posted for 1918-19 we have 98, 98A, 98B, 98C and 98D, which presumably matched  the corresponding Sections of ML 122. The Olsons were only associated with Sections A & B, and finally the Warrens only with Section A. So yes, this must have been ML 122 A & B, abbreviated to s.A and s.B in the street index.

Do we think that 98A was a ‘Dwelling’, as recorded in the 1918-19 Rate Book, or a go-down, or both? Can you ‘dwell’ in a go-down?  I haven’t been able to check the China Directory post-1918, by which time the Warren manufacturing operation had moved to Tai Hang, but was perhaps using 98A Wanchai Road as their office address. 

Thank you for trying to inject clarity into all this. I think we need to lay the Rate Books end to end!

Jill

Hi Jill,

By January 1910 the location of the CE Warren & Co. hardware factory was 100-108 Wanchai Road. I should have thought that 96 and 98 would have also been created by then – maybe in 1909?

Yes, I think they kept numbers consecutive, so if 100-108 existed, so should have been 96 & 98.

I've found a detailed map from 1897, UKNA ref MPHH 1/412, which shows building numbers. ML 111 has buildings numbered 74 & 76 Wanchai Road. Moving east from there, there are several un-numbered pieces of land including ML 122. (It's not clear if they are built on or not.) 

The last three numbered buildings on the north side of Wanchai Road are nos 78 / 80 / 82. So that explains why 98 was absent from the earlier rate books - at that time there simply wasn't any building with that number.

I haven’t seen the original application for the cleaning of human hair relating to 96 and 98 Wanchai Road in 1912, given as ML 111. What is the source for that?

I can't find the reference now, but Sean noted it was from some government correspondence.

At least we now know that no. 98 is a different property from 98A or 98B. 

Yes, and that a building's street number along Wanchai Road changed many times!

Do we think that 98A was a ‘Dwelling’, as recorded in the 1918-19 Rate Book, or a go-down, or both? Can you ‘dwell’ in a go-down?

That I'm not sure of.

Regards, David

Hello David,

Many thanks for your point by point reply and investigation of old maps. As far as 98A Wanchai Road is concerned, until contrary evidence emerges, I'm happy to trust the clerk's careful entry of 'Dwg.' ('Dwelling') shown in Patricia's post at http://gwulo.com/node/17805  If I were more skilful, I would link her scan of that 1918-19 Rate Book page to this string and others. The valuation of 98A, at three times that of the following properties 98B, 98C, 98D, 100A and 100B, which aren't labelled as 'dwellings', would seem to indicate that it had a different status. We see that it is termed the "residence of the informant" in a 1915 death certificate, so everything points towards it being habitable from these early days up until 1926, when my then 17 year old father used it as his address in a letter to his English school.

Jill

I'm still hoping a photo of this section of the street will turn up at some point, and give us a clearer idea what the buildings looked like.

In any case, it has been a useful exercise to get a better idea of how to link up the lots, street numbers, and rate books.

Regards, David