Patrick Comerford
I am sorry to have missed the opportunity to be back in Singapore and Kuching during these weeks. I have missed some family gatherings, including a wedding in Kuching last weekend, and a visit last week to the Marina Bay Sands, a landmark in Singapore and one of the great architectural works by Moshe Safdie, who is one of thes greatest living architects today.
Last year, I looked at the influence of Irish figures and Irish developers and architects on the political life and the landscape of both Singapore and Kuching.
Sir Orfeur Cavenagh (1820-1891), who had family roots in Co Wexford and Co Kildare, lived in Singapore as the Governor of the Straits Settlements in from 1859 to 1867. William Cuppage (1807-1871), who first began to develop Emerald Hill almost 200 years ago, named Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage and Clare Grove after his family’s homes in Ireland.
The architects include including George Drumgoole Coleman (1795-1844) from Drogheda, who designed the original Saint Andrew’s Cathedral and many public buildings, Denis Lane McSwiney (1800-1867) from Cork who designed the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Singapore and Denis Santry (1879-1960), also from Cork, who designed many public buildings in both Singapore and Kuching.
I aslo came across a member of the Comerford family, Gerald Francis Commerford, who was held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war in Singapore and Borneo during World War II.
Another key Irish-born figure in Singapore was Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson (1834-1897), a colonial administrator and composer, who wrote several well-known songs. Robinson only spent a short time in Singapore as the Governor of the Straits Settlement, less than three years from 1877 to 1879, and for most of his colonial career he was based in Australia. But he has left his mark in Singapore in street names and property developments.
Despite his name, Robinson was not connected with the well-known business of Robinson and Cleaver on the corner of Donegall Square and Donegall Place in Belfast. Instead, Robinson was descended from distinguished landed families in Ireland, each with a strong presence in the Church of Ireland. His father, Admiral Hercules Robinson (1789-1864), was present with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and later was the Sheriff of Westmeath in 1842.
Hercules Robinson took his unusual first name from his maternal grandfather, Sir Hercules Langrishe (1729-1811) of Knocktopher Abbey, Co Kilkenny, an MP for Kilkenny in Grattan’s Parliament and a vocal advocate of Catholic Emancipation.
The admiral’s father, the Revd Christopher Robinson, the Rector of Granard, Co Longford, while his mother, Elizabeth Langrishe, was a sister of James Langrishe (1765-1847), Dean of Achonry and Archdeacon of Glendalough, and a first cousin of both Robert Tottenham (1773-1850), Bishop of Clogher, who lived at Woodstock, Co Wicklow, and John Loftus (1770-1845), 2nd Marquess of Ely, who inherited Loftus Hall, Co Wexford, and Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin.
William Robinson was born on 14 January 1834 in Rosmead, his mother’s family home near Delvin, Co Westmeath, halfway between Mullingar and Kells. He was the fourth son of Admiral Hercules Robinson and his wife Frances Elizabeth Wood (1794-1873), the only daughter and heir of Henry Wildman Wood (1720-1795). Rosmead was built in the early 1700s by the Wood family and passed to the Robinson family after Hercules Robinson and Frances Elizabeth Wood married in 1822.
William Robinson was educated at home in Co Westmeath, and at the Royal Naval School, a private boarding in New Cross, Surrey. At the end of his school days, the indebted Robinson family were forced to sell the Rosmead estate in Westmeath in the Encumbered Estates Court. George Charles Mostyn (1804-1883), 6th Lord Vaux of Harrowden, bought the estate in 1852.
The Robinson estate included 1,564 acres at Rosmead, an additional 1,630 acres in Co Westmeath, 1,182 in Co Kilkenny, 677 in Co Meath, and 1,460 in Co Mayo. The sale of the contents alone took three days and included three grand pianofortes, a library with 1,162 books and a painting by Van Dyck.
Meanwhile, William Robinson joined the staff of the Colonial Office in 1858 as a private secretary to his brother, Hercules Robinson, who was Lieutenant Governor of St Kitts, and then accompanied him to Hong Kong in 1859.
William was appointed the President (Viceroy or Governor) of Montserrat in the West Indies in 1862. That same year, he married Olivia Edith Deane Townsend, a daughter of Thomas Stewart Townsend (1800-1852), briefly Dean of Lismore and Dean of Waterford (1850), and then Bishop of Meath (1850-1852).
Robinson was posted to Dominica and then was the Governor of the Falkland Islands (1866-1870), which he described as a ‘remote settlement at the fag end of the world’; Prince Edward Island (1870-1873), where he oversaw the island being incorporated into Canada in 1873; the Leeward Islands (1874); and, for his first time, Governor of Western Australia (1875-1877).
Robinson was appointed governor of the Straits Settlements in 1877. The Straits Settlements came under British control as a crown colony in 1867. It originally consisted of the four individual settlements of Singapore, Penang, Malacca and Dinding; Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands were added in 1886, and the island of Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, was incorporated into the colony in 1907. Most of the territories now form part of Malaysia, from which Singapore was expelled in 1965.
Robinson arrived in Singapore in 1877, ten years after the Straits Settlements had become a British crown colony. The governor was also High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States on the peninsula, and for British North Borneo, the Sultanate of Brunei and Sarawak in Borneo, ruled from Kuching by the Brooke dynasty.
At the time of his appointment to Singapore, Robinson was knighted (KCMG). From Singapore, he oversaw British interests in Bangkok in 1878, and received awards from the King of Siam (Thailand).
After his time in Singapore, Robinson later served as Governor of Western Australia for a second term (1880-1883) and Governor of South Australia (1883-1889), and was promoted in the knighthood to GCMG in 1887. He found his role as Governor of South Australia was primarily symbolic and social, and was probably bored during that time there. But he was passionate about music, playing the violin and the piano and singing, and he relieved his boredom in South Australia in musical events. He wrote many songs and composed a comic opera that was staged at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne.
He turned down an opportunity to become Governor of Hong Kong, saying he did not want to undergo its harsh climate. He was the acting Governor of Victoria in 1889, and rejected an invitation to become Governor of Mauritius. After an interlude in London, he returned for a third term as the Governor of Western Australia (1890-1895). He managed the transition of the colony to self-rule and chose John Forrest as the first Premier of Western Australia.
He retired from his colonial career in March 1895, at age 61. He moved back to England and became the director of many companies. He died on 2 May 1897 in South Kensington, London. He and his wife Olivia were the parents of two daughters and three sons. He left £84,058 in his will – the equivalent of almost £14 million today.
William Robinson often lived in the shadow of his brother, Hercules Robinson (1824-1897), another Irish-born colonial governor whose career included being Governor of Hong Kong, Governor of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Governor of New South Wales, the first Governor of Fiji, Governor of New Zealand, two terms as High Commissioner for Southern Africa, and two terms as Governor of the Cape Colony. When Hercules was made a member of the House of Lords in 1896 he chose the title of Baron Rosmead of Rosmead, Co Westmeath.
But by then the Mostyn family had put the Rosmead estate up for sale again in the Landed Estates Court in 1879. There were proposals for its adaptation ‘for religious use’ in 1933. The designs by the Dublin architect Ralph Henry Byrne (1877-1946) including the creation of an oratory.
But these proposals came to nothing. The porch and the roof were removed in 1940, much of the house was dismantled, and some of the stone work used to rebuild Balrath, Co Meath, in 1942. Since then, the house has lain in ruins.
But Sir William Robinson is remembered in the names of streets and developments in Singapore, including Robinson Road, Robinson Square, Robinson Centre and Robinson Point.
Robinson Road is a major trunk road in the Central Area that stretches from Maxwell Road to Finlayson Green. The land on which Robinson Road stands was created through land reclamation that began in 1879. It was a coastal road until more land reclamation from the early 1900s to 1932 shifted the shoreline further east to make room for building Shenton Way.
Today, Robinson Road is flanked by major skyscrapers and several developments, including Robinson Centre and Robinson Point. For years, the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Chinese daily Sin Chew Jit Poh were on Robinson Road.
Crosby House, a seven-storey office complex, is a landmark at the corner of Robinson Road and McCallum Street. It was once owned by the Standard Chartered Bank and later by Singtel. Buildings along Robinson Road include architecture built in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the curved Telecoms Building – previously known as the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company (1927) and then Cable and Wireless Building, and later the Ogilvy Centre. The building now houses So Sofitel Singapore, a five-star hotel.
In Australia, Robinson Avenue, Robinson Road and Cleaver Street in central Perth were named after Robinson, as well as Port Robinson, a natural harbour in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Of course, there were other colonial governors in Singapore who were born in Ireland or who came from Irish families.
General Sir Andrew Clarke (1824-1902), who was the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1873-1875, was a son of Colonel Andrew Clarke (1793-1847), another colonial governor, who was born in Lifford, Co Donegal. The younger Andrew Clarke was brought up by his grandfather, Dr Andrew Clarke, and two uncles, James Langton Clarke and William Hislop Clarke at the family home, Belmont, near Lifford. He went to Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and spent part of his early military career in Fermoy Co Cork.
Belmont was a large country house at Curraghlane in Lifford. The house has since been demolished, and a housing estate named Beechwood is on the grounds of the house.
Peter Benson Maxwell (1817-1893), the chief justice of the Straits Settlements in 1867-1871, was the fourth son of the Revd Peter Benson Maxwell (1780-1867) of Birdstown, Co Donegal, and was educated at Trinity College Dublin. His wife, Frances Dorothea Synge (1813-1896), was a daughter of Francis Synge (1761-1831) of Glanmore Castle, Ashford, Co Wicklow, MP for Swords. Their son, Sir William Edward Maxwell (1846-1897), was Acting Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1893-1894.
So there is much more to explore in these Irish links the next time I am in Singapore.
A walking tour of Robinson Road, Singapore
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