The Road that Got Split in Two (Twice!) Multi-Cache

If you’ve ever tried looking for Bright Hill Drive on a map, you’d have quickly realised that  there are in fact two roads named Bright Hill Drive, one branching from Upper Thomson Road, and the other from Sin Ming Avenue. It should also be fairly obvious, especially looking at them on a map, that these two roads were once upon a time a single road, which were at some point split in two.

What might be less obvious, however, is the fact that Bright Hill Drive has been split in two more than once, and that there is a third remnant of Bright Hill Drive hiding in plain sight, not too far away!

This multi-cache will take you on a little journey down the history of this unassuming, yet possibly once quite heavily trafficked roadway, visiting five locations, not including GZ.

Waypoint #1 - The Clinic and the Squatter Colony - (N 1° 21.3327', E 103° 49.926')

Standing at this spot, you are at the entrance to the oldest part of Bright Hill Drive, making it’s first appearance (as far as I can tell) in the 1953 1:25,000 topographical map of Singapore.

The old, single-storey buildings you see here, now home to a kindergarten, sit on the site of what used to be a clinic, showing up on street maps as early as 1961, and vanishing about 15 years later in 1984. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to confirm whether the buildings are original, but it seems plausible that they are.

A 1972 article in the Straits Times referred to this clinic as the “Bright Hill Drive Outpatient Dispensary and Maternal and Child Health Clinic”. Another article, from 1977, identified it as being one of 22 clinics islandwide specifically addressing the healthcare needs of mothers and their children, under the auspices of the MOH’s Mother and Child Health Department. These clinics aimed to prevent disease and promote and maintain optimal health for mothers and pre-school children, offering family planning care, pre-natal care, prescription of mineral and vitamin supplements, and postpartum aftercare services, etc.

By 1980, the clinic had been rebranded a polyclinic, providing more general healthcare services. A New Nation article from March of that year describes how mobile X-ray units mounted on Land Rovers were stationed at various locations, including this clinic, to help screen for tuberculosis in the country.

Clues as to why the clinic was eventually shut down come from a March 1979 article. In this article, Dr Toh Chin Chye, then Health Minister, noted that facilities at the Bright Hill Drive clinic could not be expanded, due to the physical constraints of the site. At the same time, a new polyclinic was being constructed at Ang Mo Kio, which would be completed in two years, and which would provide a wide variety of medical services. The article doesn’t say so explicitly, but one can speculate that with the completion of this polyclinic, need for the Bright Hill Drive clinic diminished, and thus it was closed.

Looking across Bright Hill Drive, you see an entrance to the spanking new (as of 2021) Upper Thomson MRT Station. Growing up here in the 1990s, I have the distinct memory of crossing the overhead bridge and seeing a collection of ramshackle zinc huts sitting right where this station entrance is today. Nobody else in my family seems to recall this, not even my parents, who would have been at an age to remember more reliably.

Could this be a false memory? Possibly. However, as late as 1971, there existed some 700 acres of squatter land between the fifth and sixth mile markers of Upper Thomson Road (between St Theresa’s Home and where Sin Ming Avenue touches Upper Thomson Road today). Perhaps the zinc huts of my (still dubious) memory were a remnant of some squatters residing formerly on this land?

Look for the tall object nearby bearing a large red number. Let this red number be A.

Waypoint #2 - Hong Lai Si Temple (N 1° 21.4442', E 103° 49.9437')

Roughly where there is today the entrance to an HDB car park, there used to run a street named Jalan Cherah. On this street was a Chinese temple called “Hong Lai Si Temple” (also spelt “Hong Lye See”). Unfortunately, I was able to find hardly any information at all about this temple, other than its name and a few photographs, which I can’t even confirm are really of this temple, since I have only a single source. This is surprising to me, because this temple appears on street maps as recently as 1998, well within my own living memory.

Street maps from 1984 when Jalan Cherah still existed, and later from 1991, when a carpark is built where the road used to be:

Photos of Hong Lai Si Temple?

Of course, part of the reason might be my Chinese is horrible, and my researches have thus been limited to material in English. Also, if I were motivated enough to try and seek out and speak to some of the older folks living in the area, I could probably learn a lot more through their oral accounts. Nevertheless, I like to think there is a lesson to be learnt here about the fragility of the present, how we cannot take for granted that things which are obvious and generally understood today will remain so even a decade from now, let alone two or more. We need to start documenting tomorrow’s history today, and moreover think about how these records can stay accessible, trustworthy, and comprehensible to those who many lack today’s contextual knowledge.

There is an object on the ground near here bearing the letters SEW. These letters are surrounded by dozens of identical shapes. How many corners do each of these shapes have? Let this number be B.

Waypoint #3 - Catholic High Primary? (N 1° 21.5607', E 103° 50.001’)

Welcome to the other side! You are now standing at what is the newest portion of Bright Hill Drive. I wasn’t able to establish exactly when this segment of the road opened, but the 1988 edition of the Singapore Street Map shows the road for the first time, under construction, while the 1991 edition shows it completed, so it would have been sometime between those two years.

The very next edition of the Street Map, however, in 1993, shows this segment of Bright Hill Drive disconnected from the older segment at Upper Thomson Road, and the two have been disconnected ever since! Why did this happen, and so soon after the road was completed? I have some ideas, but I’m not sure.

Sharp-eyed geocachers may notice something strange about the 1991 street map. At the corner of Bright Hill Drive and Sin Ming Avenue lies not Ai Tong School, but Catholic High Primary!

This June 1989 New Paper article describes the completion of a new building at this site for the Primary Section of Catholic High School, noting that it was designed to have a “castle look”, with “towers” and “drawbridges”. Yet just three years later, on 2 July 1992, the school moved out of this building, into its present site at Bishan Street 22. A New Paper article published the next day (which I can’t link to because it is too recent, but can be viewed at dedicated terminals in NLB libraries; references below) describes what the school called its “Long March”, with 2000 primary school students walking 2.5km to their new school building. Ai Tong School then moved into this Bright Hill Drive site just a week later, on 9 July 1992! Talk about efficient! Ai Tong School occupies the same building today, albeit upgraded nearly beyond recognition.

I was not able to confirm exactly why Catholic High School (Primary Section) occupied the Bright Hill Drive site for such a short period before moving again, but common sense leads me to conclude the Bright Hill Drive site was always only a temporary location. During roughly the same period, from 1988, the Secondary Section of Catholic High School had been housed at Bishan Street 12, in today’s Guangyang Primary School building, and this was explicitly a holding site (again, I can’t link to the article because it is too recent). Both the Primary and Secondary Sections moved into their new Bishan Street 22 premises on the same day, reuniting them for the first time in over 10 years.

Incidentally, Ai Tong School had also moved around a bit in its long history. Prior to moving into the Bright Hill Drive premises in 1992, it had been located at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3, moving into that site in 1981. Prior to that, it had occupied two other sites, both on Telok Ayer Street.

Look for “1253C1”

Waypoint #4 - Bright Hill Road (N 1° 21.6413', E 103° 50.0947')

While doing research for another cache, I came across this picture, which really puzzled me at the time, because it seemed to indicate that Bright Hill Drive once wound all the way to Marymount Road, and I could not imagine how this could be the case, with so many other roads in the way:

A quick perusal through historical street maps and old newspapers, however, made it clear what had happened. A New Nation article from February 1980 described plans for an extension of Bright Hill Drive, which then ended cleanly at Bright Hill Crescent. At the time, the temples and cemeteries on Bright Hill were accessible only via Bright Hill Drive and Sin Ming Road, both of which were in turn accessible only via Upper Thomson Road. During certain festivals, such as Qing Ming, this resulted in terrible congestion, caused by large crowds of devotees and families of the deceased converging on the area.

Heavy traffic on Upper Thomson Road during Qing Ming. This was taken at Peck San Teng nearby, rather than at Bright Hill Drive:

Street map from 1981, showing Bright Hill Drive ending cleanly at Bright Hill Crescent:

The Bright Hill Drive extension was completed and opened a year later, on 26 March 1981, costing $1.5m.

The 1984 edition of the Street Map shows this completed extension. Bright Hill Drive then pushed on past Bright Hill Crescent, bisecting the Chinese Cemetery, before taking a sharp right turn after Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Temple, heading towards Marymount Road.

Three grids: one big grid, and two identical small grids. How many squares form the width of the small grid? Let this number be D.

Waypoint #5 - The end of the road (N 1° 21.7972’, E 103° 50.1558’)

We are close to the end of our journey, and the end of Bright Hill Drive. Close to where you stand, Bright Hill Drive took a sharp right turn towards Marymount Road. What happened to this stretch of road?  Well, it became part of Sin Ming Avenue! The 1988 Street Map shows this segment of Bright Hill Drive now separated from Bright Hill Crescent, and the section after Phor Kark See Temple renamed.

Sin Ming Avenue itself was fully completed by the time the 1993 Street Map was published. We can postulate that once that happened, access to Ai Tong School and the temples at Bright Hill could be via Sin Ming Avenue, and access by Bright Hill Drive via Upper Thomson Road was no longer needed, and perhaps no longer desirable, considering it was a longer drive down a narrow road, through a housing estate, hence the splits.

The section of Bright Hill Drive connecting to Sin Ming Avenue close to Phor Kark See Temple was renamed Bright Hill Road on 1 August 1995, to avoid confusion with the segment between Upper Thomson Road and Bright Hill Crescent, although the same might be said of the segment at Ai Tong School, and that wasn’t renamed…

And so the history of the two splits.

Look for a grey object bearing the numbers “E123-55”

Final Coordinates

N 1° 21.[(B+C) x B][C]’

E 103° 49.[E][B-A][D+A]’