RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 OBITUARY HUGH GIBB Mr Hugh Gibb, a long-term Member of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, died in August 1990. With the permission of The Daily Telegraph, we reproduce here an obituary which appeared in that newspaper on Friday, August 24, 1990. HUGH GIBB, who has died aged 75, was a maker of sensitive documentary films, chiefly about Asia, which combined artistic distinction, rigorous research and a strong cultural message. His much applauded seven-part series, The Borneo Story, made in the mid-1950s, won a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. Another seven-parter, Images of the East shot in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for BBC television during the 1960s gave a unique record of the old Indo-China, particularly of the monuments at Angkor in Cambodia. Gibb was re-working his Angkor films, in the hope that they would widen sympathy for the Cambodian people and perhaps lead to the neutralisation of the site under UNESCO's aegis, when he was struck down by a sudden illness. A stickler for detail, Gibb was perhaps the last of the "one-man" producers: he did the research, wrote the scripts, filmed, edited, wrote and even spoke the commentaries of his films. His style on location was exigent, authoritarian and sometimes irascible, and this discouraged many of his would-be collaborators. Gibb's extreme individualism perhaps accounts for the incomplete state of his later work. Several ambitious films about China, particularly its great waterways, were never finished. A Lloyd's broker's son, Hugh James Gibb was born in London on March 15, 1915, and educated at Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford. He followed his father into Lloyd's before enlisting in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War. Page 15 Page 16 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 267 troops in quarantine. These were built from a framework of bamboo poles lashed together, with walls and roofs of palm leaves and woven rush mats. Similar structures can still be seen today on vacant lots erected at times of Chinese festivals for Cantonese opera performances. The only difference is that today zinc sheeting is used instead of matting. The matsheds were not popular with the troops as mosquitos and other insect life infested the sheds. During typhoons or heavy rains the sheds were liable to collapse and leave the troops exposed to the weather. The building of proper barracks was therefore imperative for the health of the troops. The first permanent buildings at Gun Club Hill were constructed in 1903-4 for infantry but were soon afterwards occupied by the Asiatic Artillery which was originally made up of Sikh and Punjabi Mussulman Companies known as Gun Lascars. They became the Hong Kong Asiatic Artillery in 1891 and the Hong Kong-Singapore Battalion Royal Artillery in 1898. In 1905 four companies were housed in the newly completed barrack blocks flanking the parade ground. According to PRO records construction was "brick and granite and best Manilla Hardwood; outer walls of Amoy Brick and inner walls of Canton Brick." By 1909 other buildings had been built and a layout of the barracks at this time shows an Infants' School, Followers' Hut, Sikh/Mohammedan Cookhouse, NCOs' Quarters, Guard House, Sergeants' Mess, Officers' Mess, and a small Medical Centre. Most of these buildings have now been replaced with more modern buildings, but two of the original barrack blocks facing the Parade Ground still exist, together with the Medical Centre and the Officers' Mess although somewhat changed in appearance. Photographic evidence in the Public Records Office shows that the buildings were brick-built two-storey colonial style blocks with pitched Chinese tiled roofs and balustraded 'Venetian' verandahs. The Officers' Mess seems to have undergone an external facelift in the 1930s with an annex added on to the south elevation facing the Chatham Road entrance. The barrack blocks and Medical Centre were remodelled and altered in the 1960s but retain much of their original colonial style. The Medical Centre, formerly the Soldiers' Canteen, numbered Block 11, is a single storey rectangular white painted brick-built block with an eight bay front verandah with a flight of steps at each end Page 300 Page 301 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 277 Appendix A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY NOTES 1860 Kowloon peninsula ceded to Britain after the China Wars. 1862 1863 Gun Club Hill & King's Park areas were tented encampments with horse lines in the Chatham Road area. 2nd Bttn. 20th Foot arrived in Hong Kong in December and encamped in Kowloon. 1885 Gun Club Hill range in existence but no buildings. 1888 1892 1899 1904 1905 1909 1910 91st Argylls arrived in December and spent first days in Kowloon matsheds at either Whitfield Bks or Gun Club. Argylls replaced by 1st Bttn. The King's Shropshire Light Infantry and quarantined in Kowloon matsheds because of smallpox outbreak on the troop ship from Alexandria. Several companies of Royal Welsh Fusileers quartered at Gun Club following disembarkation. Barracks Blocks, Officers' Mess, Guard House, Soldiers' Canteen, etc. in existence. Col. Lewis, RE(Rt.) visited Gun Club which housed the Asiatic Artillery, King's Park described as "very rough" presumably still being used for army training. Rosary Church built same year in Chatham Road (then named De Voeux Road). Mohammedan/Sikh Cookhouse and Followers' Hut in existence. 1st Bttn. The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry at ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 232 Routledge, New Edition, 1859) George Henry Mason, The Costume of the Chinese (London, William Miller, 1804) Lieutenant John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London, Saunders and Otley, 1844) "An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842," Blackwood's, 1964. The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R. N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981) Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975) Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970) Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901) Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964) Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor's Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 3 vols., 1899) 1881) Laurence Shadwell, Life and Campaigns of Lord Clyde (London, 1881) "Oh for the Joys of England! Lt Rolando Bridgman's Letters From China and Hong Kong, 1842-1843", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Vol.14 (1974) Sir John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of ================================================================================