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NOTES AND QUERIES
area later, and right up to the present day, reserved exclusively for Government buildings. In one such letter, Johnston informed Pottinger that the 'Record Office' should be completed and ready for occupation in 6 weeks time.3 A few months later, Pottinger was datelining letters 'Government House.' It is a fair assumption that this was the building to which Johnston and the Canton Press referred. It could not, therefore, have been, as Sayer asserted, the house built by Johnston as his own residence; not only because that house was not built until some time later, but also because of the directions which Pottinger gave to Johnston on the selection by the latter of a suitable site for his house. Sayer's assertion would necessitate Pottinger giving instructions on the siting of the house in which he already lived himself. But the contents of the letter provide the answer: Pottinger directed that Johnston's house was not to interfere with the site for the permanent Government House which, he said, would “be in front of the building erected as an office and record office and in which I am now residing.” Since the site for the permanent Government House was then that on which it was eventually erected, it follows that Pottinger was referring to a site lying lower down the hill than that in which he was living. Confirmation of the location is provided by a letter which Davis, second Governor, wrote to Lord Stanley (Secretary of State for the Colonies) in which he told him that his present residence, lately the Land Office, was "quite commodious enough to enable me to dispense with any other until orders shall be received from Home for its erection.”
5
The documentary evidence is confirmed by two maps of the time: both Collinson's Map and that prepared by Gordon, the Land Officer, show a group of buildings just to the south of the present Upper Albert Road. On Collinson's map (the later of the two) they are marked simply 'Government Buildings,' but on Gordon's map of 1843 they are called 'Government House.' At about this time, the Friend of China newspaper described a new road which passed in front of Government House and descending to Queen's Road near Johnston's House. It must therefore be taken to be established that a collection of buildings immediately to the south of the present Government House were the first to bear the name. Though Sayer admits of the existence of these buildings on this site, he fails to relate them to the general question which he sought to answer.