31 October 2024

The architect from
Cork who designed
the GPO in Kuching
for the Brooke family

The General Post Office in Kuching is an outstanding example of the mixed and cosmopolitan architectural legacy of the city (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The General Post Office in Kuching is an outstanding example of the mixed and cosmopolitan architectural legacy of the city and one of the reminders of the days when the Brooke family ruled as the ‘White Rajahs’ of Sarawak.

The GPO is a highly visible part of the city’s architectural grandeur, stands on Jalan Tun Haji Openg, on the corner with Carpenter Street, and close to both Saint Thomas’s Cathedral and Padang Merdeka, the main square in the heart of Kuching.

Although it was built in 1931, it looks like an early 19th century public building, with its neo-classical grandeur and its Corinthian columns – the only building in Sarawak in this style.

This elegant neo-classical masterpiece was designed by the Irish-born architect Denis Santry (1879-1960) of Swan and Maclaren Architects Singapore, the same architectural practice that designed Saint Thomas’s Anglican Cathedral in Kuching.

Denis Santry was both an architect and cartoonist. As well as the Post Office in Kuching, he designed several prominent structures in Singapore, including the Sultan Mosque and the Cenotaph.

Santry was born in Cork on 14 May 1879, the son of Ellen and Denis Santry, a carpenter and joiner. He served his apprenticeship to his father as a cabinetmaker and then studied at the Cork Municipal School of Art (1894-1896) and the Crawford School of Art, Cork (1895). In 1897, he was articled to the architect James Finbarre McMullen (1859-1933), whose best-known work is the Honan Chapel at University College Cork (1914-1916).

Santry then studied at the Royal College of Art in London (1897-1898) under a Lane scholarship. There he won the Queen’s Prize for freehand drawing. After graduating, he returned to McMullen’s office and worked there for the next two years.

Santry moved to South Africa in 1901 due to ill health. He worked at Tully & Waters, an architectural practice in Cape Town (1901-1902), and then with the architect William Patrick Henry Black (1867-1922). His cartoons began appearing in 1903 in local newspapers and magazines with the pseudonym ‘Adam’. He married Madeline Hegarty in 1904.

Later, Santry moved to Johannesburg where he worked with the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail as a cartoonist, and also become a pioneer of animated cartoons in South Africa.

Th GPO in Kuching was designed by the Irish-born architect Denis Santry (1879-1960) of Swan and Maclaren Architects Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Santry moved to Singapore in 1918 and joined Swan & Maclaren as a partner. There he was the architect of several prominent buildings and monuments, including the Sultan Mosque, the Cenotaph, the Maritime Building, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building and the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church. He was the first president of the Saint Patrick’s Society Singapore, was a frequent contributor to the Straits Produce, a satirical magazine, and helped to found the Singapore Society of Architects and the Institute of Architects of Malaya.

After designing the GPO in Kuching, Santry retired to England in 1934 but he returned to South Africa in 1940. After World War II, he resumed his practice as a result of lost income caused by the Japanese occupation of Malaya. He died in Durban on 14 April 1960.

His magnificent GPO in Kuching has remained in continuous use as the General Post Office since it was completed in 1932, almost a century ago. This architectural marvel, approximately 100 ft in length, is a remarkable sight to behold.

The building was commissioned by Charles Vyner, the third Rajah of Sarawak. Its neoclassical façade was quite a contrast to the style of buildings favoured by James Brooke and Charles Brooke, the first and second Rajah.

The site of Santry’s post office was once a police station and also the Rajah’s stables, where the Rajah’s the horses were fed, watered and groomed, with a coach house, hay loft and harness room, and surrounded by areca palms. The stables were part of an era when horses were reserved for the elite, but the new post office symbolised the city’s transition into modernity in the decade immediately before World War II.

The GPO also served as a telegram service centre and the Kuching branch of the Chartered Bank, and for a time an annexe behind the building served as the office of the Land and Survey Department. Some 3,300 mailboxes were installed in the post office to provide mail receiving services for people who did not have correspondence addresses.

The coat-of-arms of the Brooke family as the Rajahs of Sarawak displayed on the GPO in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The façade of the GPO has semi-circular arches, intricately adorned column capitals, and friezes, showcasing a blend of form and function. Deep parapet walls hide the pitched roof, the colonnaded portico serves as a corridor, while the rear of the building is simple and austere.

The grandeur of the building is further accentuated by 12 towering Corinthian columns standing proudly at the main entrance, reaching heights of 30 ft. In the pediment above the Corinthian columns, the coat-of-arms of the Brooke family is a reminder of an era of benevolent rule that stood outside the British colonial system. Other buildings that have survived from the reign of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke include the Old Courthouse and the Astana.

The Brooke motto, part of the heraldic decoration, proclaims: Dum Spiro Spero, ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ It is also the motto of many places and organisations, including the State of South Carolina, and of many other families, including the Hoare baronets of Annabella, Co Cork, the Cotter baronets of Rockforest, Co Cork, the Viscounts Dillon, and the Sharp and Sharpe families.

The sense of dum spiro spero is found in the writings of the Greek poet Theocritus (3rd Century BCE), who wrote: ‘While there’s life there’s hope, and only the dead have none.’ That sentiment seems to have become common by the time of Cicero (106-43 BCE), who wrote to Atticus: ‘As in the case of a sick man one says, ‘While there is life there is hope’ [dum anima est, spes esse], so, as long as Pompey was in Italy, I did not cease to hope.’

The grandeur of the GPO is enhanced by 12 towering Corinthian columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Ten years after the GPO was built, however, hope may seemed to come to end for many in Kuching when the Japanese invaded on Christmas Eve 1941. The capture of the city was notified to the British Far East Command in Singapre with a pithy, single-line telegram sent from the GPO that declared: ‘Pussy’s in the Well.’

Kuching became Kyuchin in Japanese, and in July 1942 the Chartered Bank in Kuching was converted into a branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank.

Despite invasion, war, the end of the Brooke era, and the subsequent end of British colonialism, the GPO has continued to survive in Kuching in an era that sees traditional postal services being replaced, by digital alternatives such as emails, instant messaging, and online banking and communications.

The Sarawak state government has considered applying to have the post office listed as a UNESCO heritage site. The building remains a cherished symbol of Kuching’s heritage, its architectural splendour is a reminder of a bygone era.

The GPO remains an integral part of Kuching’s architectural heritage and a reminder of a bygone era (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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