Emerald Hill is a neighbourhood and conservation area located in the planning areas of Newton and Orchard in Singapore, positioned near Orchard Road. The area features a rich blend of Peranakan and Sino-Baroque architecture, with majolica tiles, abundant foliage, and colorful paint jobs as defining design features.
It is primarily a residential area, with the first few terrace houses along the row, and the lower end of the street near Orchard Road, transformed into popular food & beverage establishments. The neighbourhood is an inportant visit for anyone interested in architecture, conservation, or the history of early Singapore. Several houses sport Architectural Heritage Award plaques and informational boards about original residents.
Before the time of Stamford Raffles and William Farquhar, Emerald Hill was believed to be fully covered in primary rainforest. Around the early 1800s, many Chinese immigrants occupied the land with Gambier or pepper plantations. Upon exhaustion of the plantations, the trees were cleared between 1819 and 1836 to provide fuel for the boiling of gambier leaves.
After decades of exploitation, Emerald Hill became a barren wasteland. The land mass of Emerald Hill was leased in 1837 to William Cuppage. In 1845, William Cuppage was granted permanent ownership of Emerald Hill, where he planted vast nutmeg plantations and built two villas for himself,1
William Cuppage
William Cuppage’s father, Lieut. Col. William Cuppage was born in Ireland in 1761 and as a young man went to India as an officer in the Bengal Army which was part of the East India Company. He was a country cadet, one of ten young Irish volunteers who arrived in 1781 to join Eyre Coote’s army and were given commissions in the Bengal Army. He died at Fatehgarh on 1st July 1819.
He did not marry but had at least four illegitimate children by Elizabeth Ramsay his ‘housekeeper’. They were Maria (born 26th June 1802 and married to Alfred Leonard Willis in 1826), William Jr (born 2nd August 1807 and married to Sarah Bradshaw in Singapore on the 17th December 1840), (Mary Ann born 17th February 1809 and married to John Reilly Archer Amman on 26th June 1829), Eliza (born 29th January 1813 and married to William Gibson on the 23rd July 1838 at Calcutta Cathedral).
William Cuppage Jr made his way to Singapore, a rapidly growing British colonial port. He worked at the post office, starting off as a postal clerk before rising through the ranks. ultimately appointed as Acting Postmaster General in 1856 then its first postmaster. in 1857, retiring in 1871. He married Sarah Bradshaw on 17 December 1840 in Singapore. Remember Singapore The couple had daughters, and it was through these daughters that the Cuppage estate would eventually pass on after his death.
He first leased Emerald Hill in 1837 and in 1845 secured a permanent grant for a nutmeg plantation, which failed in the 1860s because of disease. Cuppage himself moved from his residence in Hill Street to Emerald Hill in the early 1850s and lived in the area till his death in 1872. Here he built two houses: Erin Lodge and Fern Cottage where he lived. After his death, the plantation was left to his daughters and in 1890 it was sold to one of his sons-in-law, the lawyer Edwin Koek.
Edwin Koek
Edwin Koek, was born on 27 May 1840 in Soerabaja, a descendant of the Koek family from Malacca. He made his way to Singapore and built a formidable legal career. He was admitted to the Singapore Bar in 1864, making him one of the prominent early solicitors of the colonial era. His firm Koek & Evans, handled conveyancing, land transactions, and estate work across Singapore and the Straits Settlements. Koek was also deeply involved in colonial Singapore's public administration.
He first married Jessie Emilie Hendricks in 1864 , who died at the young age of 23. They had two children. He subsequently married Emily Sarah Cuppage, William Cuppage’s daughter. When William Cuppage died in 1872, he left his plantations to his three daughters, and Edwin Koek, as one of his sons-in-law, subsequently purchased the estate.
Koek turned the area into an orchard and built another house on the estate, which he called Claregrove. He also planted the property with fruit trees, cocoa, and Liberian coffee. He owned another property called Woodbank at the mouth of the Ponggol River, similarly planted.
Whilst he was Municipal Commissioner, he built Koek’s Market on the estate in 1880, the original structure a small, open wooden construction with a zinc roof, completed around 1880. It was soon leased to the municipal authorities and became the Orchard Road Municipal Market.
Orchard Road Market
Orchard Road Market pictured above was a landmark located at the junction of Orchard Road and Koek Road, where Orchard Point is standing now. Both Cuppage Road and Koek Road were named after them.2
The market became the go-to place for Emerald Hill residents selling fresh produce. There were also hawker stalls along Koek Road which sold local favourites such as char kway teow, sup kambing, and satay beehoon.3 There was also the Singapore Cold Storage that catered mainly to the European residents living in the Orchard area.
Koek’s orchard venture failed, however, and he went bankrupt. The property was then sold to Thomas E. Rowell in 1891. In 1900, the estate was purchased by local Chinese businessmen Seah Boon Kang and Seah Eng Kiat, who carved up the land into smaller lots and sold them to individual owners who built the first terrace houses and shophouses.4 His son Edwin Rowland Koek continued the family's legal legacy, and a grandson, Edward Rowland Koek, also entered the law.
Today, the individual terrace houses and shophouses are privately owned by different people. In 2008, the Emerald Hill Conservation Association was formed by a group of Emerald Hill homeowners concerned about the long-term protection of the estate as a historic and cultural residential area.
The broader area is overseen by the Urban Redevelopment Authority which gazetted Emerald Hill as a conservation area in 1989 requiring owners follow strict guidelines to preserve the heritage architecture. The market was torn down by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and replaced by Orchard Point in 1982, with its stalls resettled in Cuppage Centre in 1978.
All three original houses on the Emerald Hill estate — Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage, and Claregrove, were subsequently demolished. Fern Cottage was torn down in 1906 to make way for terrace houses, and in 1924 Claregrove gave way to the Singapore Chinese Girls' School. Erin Lodge was similarly replaced with terrace houses.