WARDLEY STREET
With the work of preparation of site for the new Hong Kong Bank building, a strip of roadway joining Queen's Road and Des Voeux Road has been taken over, as it ran alongside the bank premises and will presently be built over. This was Wardley Street, which was closed to all traffic a few days ago. It served as a short cut, used chiefly by foot passengers, and was not without its dangers owing to forming a right-angled junction with two main arteries of the city's vehicular traffic. However, the disappearance of a street in the heart of the city is of historic interest. The newcomer of a few years hence will have no idea, while the wanders through the spacious halls of the bank, that a roadway in use for many years once ran right under his feet. The record that should be preserved is chiefly the association of the street-that-is-no-more with some phase of the Colony's growth. Who was Wardley? How many of us can say offhand; and how many care these days? Yet it is right that if he ever existed, he should be remembered, and his existence recalled, when the street that was to perpetuate his name is reclaimed for building purposes; especially as the name exists nowhere else in the Colony.
But many will be surprised to learn that no Wardley ever existed in the flesh. I am indebted to various persons, officials and others, who co-operated in an effort to discover the source of origin of the name - and eventually the mystery was solved in the Hongkong Bank itself. Wardley is the bank's telegraphic address, and it appears that when the side street between the bank and the City Hall came to be named, that word was selected! And how came the bank to have Wardley for its cable address? That is somewhat "wrapped in mystery"; it seems that one of the founders suggested it when the institution came into being, and it was adopted. Nobody with that name appears ever to have been connected with the bank, or with Hongkong.
"Bindihi"; I question the accuracy of the origin of the name of Wardley Street (20.6.33). It seems to me more likely that the Bank took its cable address from the name of the street rather than vice versa, especially as no one remembers a Wardley connected with the Bank. Strange that although the old Bank building is said to have been completed in 1882 there is no mention of it in the newspaper report of the annual meeting that year, nor in the Blue Book.
"Anon": I, too, question the accuracy of the origin of the name of Wardley Street. May I be permitted to point out that the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Company Ltd., in its early advertisements gave the address of its Hongkong Office as being at Wardley House, No.1 Queen's Road? From such I think it may be assumed that the Bank took its cable address and that Wardley Street was not named after the latter. In the circumstances you are still faced with the problem of determining whom or what the street (and now the house) was named after.
"Old Resident". "Re Wardley Street and whence came the name. You may be interested to learn that in the early fifties a firm styled W.H. Wardley & Co., existed in the Colony. This firm also had offices in Canton.'
"Research. *In your search for the origin of the name of Wardley Street, reference was made some time ago to the fact that at one time the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Company had its offices in Wardley House, 1 Queen's Road (23-6-33).
"From a Half-Yearly Report of the Court of Directors of this Bank published in 1866 I find verification of this fact for under the heading "Premises" the following appears:
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