Patrick Comerford
I was writing the other evening about my recent visit to Emerald Hill in Singapore with its colourful and carefully-restored low-rise heritage houses, its rich collection of Peranakan houses and shopfronts and its Perankan and Sino-Baroque architecture that make it a unique part of Singapore’s architectural heritage.
I thought initially that the name Emerald Hill referred to the past green and forested area the area may have been in the days before Stamford Raffles and William Farquhar, when Emerald Hill was covered in primary rainforest.
But now I am convinced that Emerald Hill, and three of the first houses built in the area by the Cuppage family – Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage and Clare Grove – were all named in a romantic harkening back to Ireland and the ancestral homes of William Cuppage (1807-1871), who first began to develop Emerald Hill almost 200 years ago.
William Cuppage was a descendant of an Irish family that included many prominent church and military figures in the 18th and 19th centuries. The family homes in Ireland included Clough Castle, near Ballymena, and Mount Edwards, near Cushendall, Co Antrim, and Clare Grove, later Clare Hall, in Coolock, north Dublin.
The Cuppage or Cuppaidge family may have been from Germany originally, and moved from Cumberland in England to Ireland in 1604 when Faustus Cuppaidge bought lands near Coleraine, Co Derry. His son, Stephen Cuppaidge, was MP for Coleraine in 1641 and 1664, and was the father of John Cuppaidge, who bought Clough Castle, Co Antrim.
In military life, at least five members of the Cuppage family were officers in the Madras army in colonial India. In Church life, the Very Revd George Cuppage was Dean of Connor (1739-1743) and Rector of Coleraine, Co Derry. He married a great-aunt of the orator Edmund Burke, bringing the names Edmund and Burke into the family, and his son, the Revd Burke Cuppage was also Rector of Coleraine (1743-1768).
The Revd Burke Cuppiage was the father of Lieut-Gen William Cuppage (1756-1832). He had a distinguished military career in Gibraltar before going to in India in 1808-1809 to lead an expedition to restore the Raja of Panna, Kishor Singh, to his territorial lands in Bundelkhand. Later, he was inspector-general of the Royal Artillery and the Navy in 1815. His son, Lieut-Gen Sir Burke Douglas Cuppage (1794-1877), fought at the Battle of Waterloo under the Duke of Wellington and was Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey (1863-1868).
Another branch of the family lived in Lambstown, Co Wexford, from the 17th century, and Robert Cuppage (1619-1683) of Lambstown was a leading Quaker.
The branch of the family from which William Cuppage of Singapore descends goes back to Canon John Cuppaidge (1658-1725), a brother of the Revd Burke Cuppiage. William was Rector of Magheralin, Co Down, Prebendary of Dromaragh and Vicar-General of Dromore. He married Eizabeth Waring of Waringstown, Co Down, in 1693 and their six children included two sons:
1, Richard Cuppiadge (1698-1765).
2, John Cuppiadge (1704-1797).
Captain John Cuppaidge (1704-1797) was born in Magheralin, Co Down, and matriculated at Trinity College Dublin in 1721 aged 17, but did not take a degree. He enlisted in the army in 1724, and by 1727 he was an ensign in Colonel Sandes Regiment.
In 1730, he married Mary Otway, daughter of James Otway and granddaughter of John Otway of Castle Otway, near Nenagh, Co Tipperary. They lived in Killowning, Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and Ballyborden, Co Offaly, and were the parents of five children, including two sons:
1, John Loftus Cuppaidge or Cuppage.
2, George Cuppaidge.
The elder son, John Loftus Cuppage married Dorothy Handcock in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, on 17 December 1768. She was a daughter of the Very Revd Richard Handcock (1712-1791), Dean of Achonry (1752-1791), and a sister of William Handcock (1761-1839), 1st Viscount Castlemaine, MP for Athlone (1783-1801), Governor of Athlone (1813-1839) and Governor of Co Westmeath (1814-1831). Another brother, Richard Handcock (1767-1840), 2nd Baron Castlemaine, was MP for Athlone (1800-1801).
John Loftus Cuppage died on 15 April 1797 in Moydrum Castle, Athlone, the home of his brother-in-law, William Handcock. As for Handcock, he was killed on the Night of the Big Wind in 1839 when the wind blew his bedroom shutters open at Moydrum Castle and hurled him ‘so violently upon his back that he instantly expired’.
Dorothy and John Loftus Cuppiadge were the parents of:
1, Richard Cuppage.
2, William Cuppage (1761-1819).
3, George Cuppage.
Lieutenant-Colonel William Cuppage (1761-1819), their second son, was born in Ireland in 1761, and as a young man he went to India and became an officer in the Bengal Army. He was one of ten young Irish volunteers who arrived in India in 1781 to join Eyre Coote’s army and who were given commissions in the Bengal Army, which was part of the East India Company Service.
Colonel William Cuppage did not marry, but he and his ‘housekeeper’ Elizabeth Ramsay were the parents of at least four children, three daughters and a son:
1, Maria (1803-1861), married Alfred Leonard Willis in Calcutta Cathedral in 1826.
2, William Cuppage (1807-1871), who moved to Singapore.
3, Mary Ann, born 1809, married John Reilly Archer Amman in 1829.
4, Eliza, born 1813, married William Gibson in Calcutta Cathedral in 1838.
Some sources suggest William Cuppage also had a home in Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown), Co Dublin. But he seems to have lived in India for most of his life and at the age of 58 he died on 1 July 1819 at Fatehgarh in Farrukhabad District in the State of Uttar Pradesh, India, and he was buried there.
The only known son of Colonel William Cuppage, William Cuppage (1807-1871), was born on 2 August 1807. He moved to Singapore, and first leased Emerald Hill in 1837. In 1845 he secured a permanent grant for his nutmeg plantation. Cuppage moved from his home on Hill Street to Emerald Hill in the early 1850s and built two houses, Erin Lodge and Fern Cottage.
Although his nutmeg plantation failed in the 1860s because of disease, he held onto his land on Emerald Hill, and he was Assistant Postmaster General of Singapore.
Cuppage married Sarah Bradshaw in Singapore on 17 December 1840. After he died in 1872, his plantation was left to his daughters and in 1890 it was sold to one of his sons-in-law, the lawyer Edwin Koek.
Koek turned the area into an orchard and built another house that he named Claregrove, after Clare Grove, near Coolock, the principal Cuppage family home near Dublin. But this orchard failed too, Koek went bankrupt, and the property was sold to Thomas E Rowell in 1891.
The three houses once owned by the Cuppage family were later demolished: Fern Cottage made way in 1906 for terrace houses; Claregrove gave way in 1924 to the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School; and Erin Lodge was replaced with more terrace houses.
William Cuppage’s distant cousin, Edmond Floyd Cuppage (1809-1864), lived at Clare Grove, Coolock, Co Dublin, and Mount Edwards, Co Antrim. Edmond was the son of General Alexander Cuppage (1762-1848) of Clare Grove, and the grandson of the Revd Alexander Cuppage (1727-1772), who was drowned between Ballycastle, Co Antrim, and Rathlin Island.
Edmund’s father-in-law was George Thompson of Clonskeagh Castle, Dublin, while his sister, Marianne Cuppage, married on 6 May 1828 the Revd Francis Law of Salmesbury, a son of Belinda Isabella Comerford and the Revd Francis Law (1768-1807), Vicar of Attanagh and Rector of Cork; Belinda was a daughter of Patrick Comerford, a Cork wine merchant. Their first child, Francis Law (1829-1898), was born at Clare Grove in Dublin on 27 February 1829.
Clare Grove was later renamed Claregrove Hall and then Clare Hall, before becoming the Clare Manor Hotel. The house burned down in a fire, and it later became the site of the Clare Hall shopping centre, which opened in 2004, but the ice house of the original house remains.
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