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1954 Austin Road
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Do you think the chapel is
Do you think the chapel is shown in this photo: http://gwulo.com/atom/24882
Design looks similar but without the little steeple
Which quadrant ? I don't
Which quadrant ? I don't know what I'm look at.
There is a road to the right
There is a road to the right of the fire damaged area - Jervois Street. Follow this up towards the top right of the photo and on the left hand side of the street amidst a row of houses is a white chapel building
Looks likely. I've added a
Looks likely. I've added a detail view. I don't have online access to the LMS archives to confirm the lot numbers.
The location is one block
The location is one block over, just to the right of the current Lee Fung building label on the map.
Burnt down in December 1851
Page 79 of the book James Legge, Missionary and Scholar says the first chapel was burnt down in the great fire of December 1851:
Incidents of Chinese Life and Work
The end of 1851 was marked by calamity. In an extensive fire, by which thousands of the Chinese population lost all their property, the Mission Church and the Hospital were reduced to ashes. Energetic measures, however, were taken for the reconstruction of the buildings, cordial help was granted by the London Missionary Society, and, best of all, public confidence remained unshaken.
"Hong Kong, Dec. 30, 1851.
"We had a very fine meeting in the Chinese Chapel last Sabbath night There were more than a hundred people there who were going to sail to-day for California, and very attentive they were. I came home cheered by such a close to the Sabbath services of the year. About ten o’clock a servant came and told me that a fire had broken out in the Chinese town; I looked and saw some houses blazing. Going to the spot I saw the flames were rapidly extending, and in a couple of hours five or six hundred houses were in one terrible conflagration. Our chapel and hospital were involved in the ruin. [...]"
(I originally thought the text above referred to the first Union Church, but Herostratus corrected me that it referred to this Place:
The LMS also had a chapel in the Chinese Bazaar and it seems more likely that this was the one that was destroyed in 1851 as 'thousands' of Chinese lost their homes and five or six hundred homes were burnt. This are of Hollywood Road was a mainly European populated area at the time: the government in 1844 had shifted the original Chinese town from this area to Tai Ping Shan so it could be used for European settlement.
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