Demolition of century-old underground reservoir suspended by Hong Kong authorities after they bow to public calls for it to be preserved
- The underground reservoir, believed to have been completed in 1904, is a cavernous chamber featuring soaring brick arches
- It first came to the public’s – and heritage advisers’ – attention on Monday after images taken by locals went viral
Demolition work has been halted after conservationists, politicians and heritage-minded members of the public appealed for the preservation of a massive, arched-brick, underground reservoir in Hong Kong dating back to the beginning of the last century.
The service reservoir in an area known locally as Bishop Hill in Shek Kip Mei, Sham Shui Po, discovered underground as the Water Supplies Department was clearing the site to hand it over to the Lands Department, had apparently escaped the attention of government heritage advisers.
The striking-looking, cavernous structure was slated to be dismantled without publicity, but images shared online by members of the public and picked up by the news media tapped into a groundswell of heritage-protection sentiment and put pressure on government bureaucracy to preserve it.
A visit by the Post found that demolition works had already started, with the site mostly closed off by metal fences. The underground chamber can be accessed by climbing down several ladders from an opening in the ground, believed to be used by construction workers.
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Demolition of Hong Kong old reservoir halted after calls for heritage assessment
The site was partly ruined, with chunks of broken bricks and rubble filling up one portion, fragments of the high ceilings chipped off and plant roots poking through from above.
