The former Bishop’s Gate in Kuching is now reduced to its Belian or ‘ironwood’ frame and a small surviving portion of brick wall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
We are staying in China Street, off Carpenter Street, in the heart of the old Chinese area of Kuching. The next street east along Carpenter Street, where Carpenter Street meets Ewe Hai Street meet, is Bishopsgate Street. It cuts across Carpenter Street and runs parallel with China Street.
Bishopsgate is also named on signposts and street signs as Bishopgate, and it is also known locally as Little Side Street or Side Street.
Walking north, Bishopsgate leads to the Main Bazaar and the Waterfront. Walking south, the street comes to an end where a Victorian-era gate once led into the garden of the Anglican Bishops of Kuching.
The street has no connection with Bishopsgate in London. Instead, it takes its name from the Bishops of Kuching who once used this gate with other senior church figures to reach the market or the bazaar in Kuching from the grounds of Saint Thomas’s Cathedral.
Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, a brick wall and the gate separated the Anglican mission complex, including the Cathedral, the Bishop’s House and the House of the Epiphany, from the Chinese shophouses and the bazaar.
The stout ironwood doors of the Bishop’s Gate were used for pedestrian access to the main streets of Kuching, including the bazaar and the Waterfront. At dusk, the bishop’s watchman locked the gate, keeping the mission staff and families safe inside and making sure any unwelcome visitors or intruders were kept outside.
Bishopsgate or Bishopgate? … it depends on which street sign you read (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Chinese migration to Sarawak probably took places in three waves, with the first arrivals crossing into Sarawak from West Kalimantan, then in the Dutch East Indies and now part of Indonesia, in the early 19th century. Those early settlers were mainly the Hakka whose origins were in Jiaying Zhou in China.
The second wave of Chinese settlers in Sarawak arrived by sea before the arrival of Sir James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak, in the 1800s and they were mainly Teochew and Hokkien people. They were followed by the Cantonese who came at the invitation of the then Rajah in the 1900s.
The last carpenter on Carpenter Street shut up shop some years ago. But some of the traditional craft and artisan shops survive on these streets, including the tinsmiths, watchmakers, silversmiths and jewellers.
Until the early 1960s, there was a kindergarten near the Bishop’s gate, and after a year the children there went on to attend Saint Thomas Primary School.
A new road, named Jalan Wawasan, was cut through the area between the back of Carpenter Street and the north side of the cathedral grounds in 1993, leaving the Bishop’s Gate without its original function. The once prominent gate is now reduced to its belian or ‘ironwood’ frame and a small surviving portion of the brick wall, close to a bar known as the ‘Drunken Monkey’.
Bishopsgate Street, Carpenter Street, Ewe Hai Street and China Street are popular with tourists, with their cafés, food shops, and street stalls. In the evening, the area around the Bishop’s Gate has become a popular meeting area, with bars such as the Drunken Monkey, food stalls and vans, including a good pizza van known as Balkanoo.
Looking north from the Bishop’s Gate and the Drunken Monkey along Bishopsgate Street towards the Main Bazaar and the Waterfront in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
No comments:
Post a Comment