225' 0"
MIDDLE STREET
NOW
QUEEN'S ROAD WEST.
100′ 0′′
15' 0"
10' 0"
Inland Lot No 671
45′ 0′′
F
of Sipe Portion
resumed 1885
per Squas
are
138: 0"
225' 0"
100' 0"
15' 0")
HILL STREET.
PLAN A.
45' 0*
Showing advantageous arrangement of site, with passage 10' wide, and with houses 15' contre to centre, the size most approved by Chinese.
MIDDLE STREET
NOW
QUEEN'S ROAD WEST. 91' 6"
14 714/7"
Λ
147"
130' 0"
V
<
43' 97
89' 7"
$9/"
Suland Lot No. 670
140°
39' *#
Unavailable slope of hill, 4 shops' ground wasted.
93' 0"
HILL STREET.
PLAN E.
>
Shewing disadvantageons arrangement of curtailed site, with inconveniently narrow passage from Queen's Road, and with bouses of a size disapproved by Chinese.
See plan annexed O.
See plan annexed and cloth plan at end.
5 On 2nd December, 1886
See plan page 204.
118
Immediately afterwards the remaining portion was auctioned by the Mortgagee on 27th August, and sold for $10,000 or .82 cents $ per foot, the Mortgagee having paid .94 cents $ per foot.
On examining the plan showing the usual size of Chinese shops it will be seen that the land sold, as above, was at the south end seven feet too narrow, viz 93 instead of 100; and ten feet too long. The back of the ground also was very precipitious. In building, four shops were therefore lost, and all were inconveniently narrow;
the shops behind also being very much shut in by reason of the want of 3 feet in the width of the lane.
The fourteen proximate lots of land at Shek-tong-tsui forming a group, and embracing No. 671, were all of them laid out measuring 100 feet broad for the accommodation of 6 Chinese shops, each measur- ing 15 feet upon the street, and a 10 feet wide lane. Almost all the lots in Hongkong were originally 100 feet wide. The width 15 feet for Chinese houses is universally adopted where the ground admits of it, the imported joists and purlins for floors and roofs being exactly measured, any deviation involves greatly increased cost. Had the ground been of a convenient shape it would have fetched considerably more. As it was,
the buyer, having purchased at a forced sale, realised, the year following,§ a profit of $6,500 or $1.36 per foot for the ground.* The principal defect in the lot, however, was not in its disadvantageous measurements, but that, so to speak, one of its eyes had been put out by the deprivation of the street on the South side, to which the owner of this lot was originally entitled under the Crown Lease; the Lot being therein described as "abutting on the South upon a priblie street, and measuring thereon one hundred feet." This boundary mensure- ment was published in the Government Gazette of 15th June, 1861, at page 174, attention being therein called to the plan lying for inspection at the Surveyor General's office.
The deprivation of this most important frontage on the public highway occurred when the 4,400 feet were resumed by the Government on 23rd February, 1878. The eight shops behind, forming a cul-de-sac were thus deprived of all Southern egress and ventilation, a sore evil at all times in this climate, but in this case further aggravated by the hill immediately to the rear of the site, by which all air from the South West, the most important point, is effectually excluded.
Had the street at the South side of the lot been made, as promised by the Government, this would have been very different, and a large portion of the traffic to and from the West to the City would naturally have passed through it, as being the shorter ent, compared with the length of the outer circumference, round the corner. In this case the South side of the Lot, being just as near to the water as the North side, would have been equally, if not more valuable. The ground would then have been worth $3 per foot.
How then, it may be asked, did Mr. Chater, a good judge in this market, agree to surrender for 40 cents $ per foot 5,928 feet of his lot? Simply because of its position and surroundings, which were altogether distinct from those of Inland Lot No. 671. Mr. Chater's vendor, Mr. Ediaund Sharp, the late Crown Solicitor, although he con- sidered the course adopted most injurious, and for ten years declined to accept the compensation offered; yet, being at that time in the Govern ment employ, and unwilling to resist their action, had submitted in 1878 to the resumption of the Southern portion of his lot, and with this went the right to the street described in the Crown Lease. Thereafter came the second resumption in 1885, the purpose of which was that the ground might remain as a support to the hill forming a portion of tho War Department reserve which it had been resolved should be appro-
*This ground immediately adjoins that resumed at .40 cents $ per foot, see colored clutlı plan herewith.
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