RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
266

The origin of the name "Gun Club Hill" is uncertain, but it may be because a gun club was once based there. Shooting was a popular pastime with the army and Kowloon with its market gardens, streams and paddy fields would have provided good sport. Game would have included resident birds such as the Chinese francolin or partridge, and the spotted-neck dove, as well as migratory birds such as teal, duck, geese, quail, woodcock and snipe. The latter are winter visitors and still visit Hong Kong. The writer has observed snipe on two separate occasions in the Kowloon urban area, once in Gun Club Hill Barracks itself. Doves can also still be seen in the Barracks.

The name "Gun Club" may however also be derived from the firing range in King's Park which followed almost exactly the present line of Wylie Road. Old record maps in the Public Records Office show the range extending north from the firing points at Gun Club Hill across Gascoigne Road to the butts near the present site of the old British Military Hospital. A shorter range, to the west of the military range, on the present site of Queen Elizabeth Hospital was probably the police firing range or the Naval Association firing range.

The whole of this area, now known as King's Park, was reserved for rifle ranges, field firing and military exercises. At the north end of the park was a hill known as Danger Flag Hill where red warning flags were flown when firing was taking place. This hill is now the public open space known as King's Park Rise Garden. Steps wind up the hill past numerous benches and pergolas to the summit where there is a curious rock formation of huge boulders almost forming a natural redoubt. There is now no evidence of any military use, although originally there may have been a range warden's store for targets and flags. There is a good view from the summit looking south down Wylie Road to Gun Club Hill.

The cession of the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain opened up new areas of training for the military. Companies from units based at Murray and Victoria Barracks were sent to Kowloon on monthly rotation for firing and musket practice. Before the barracks were built the troops were quartered in tents. Early photographs of Kowloon show large tented encampments stretching right across the peninsula.

Matsheds were also used to accommodate newly disembarked
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
251

Situated on the South slope of Danger Flag Hill, Kowloon, on Military Reserve Land, midway between the Military and Association Rifle Rangers and about thirty yards to the North of the line joining the butts. The Cemetery measures fifty-feet square and its limits have been defined by wooden pickets.77

There was another Indian cemetery at Tai Shek Ku78 recorded in a government notice, which was ordered to be closed in 1927;79 however, the origin of this cemetery is not known.

Cemeteries in the Early 20th Century

The first two decades of the 20th century was a period of steady economic and administrative development in Hong Kong, in spite of the influx of Chinese as a result of unsettled condition following the 1911 Revolution in China. A long list of cemeteries was added during this period.

In 1903, the 'Sai Yu Shek Cemetery'80 (晒魚石墳場) was appointed 'to the North of Kowloon City and West of Nga Tsin, as a sufficient and proper place for a burial ground for Chinese living in the vicinity of Kowloon City.'81 In addition, there was also a Sai Yu Shek (Christian) Cemetery.82

In the same year (1903), it was also announced that the 'Po Kong Po Cemetery' (), 'situated to the North-east of Kowloon City and West of the Village of Sha Ti Un'83 () was to be closed. Again, no information examined has revealed the origin of this cemetery, although the cemetery is mentioned in a privately published memoir regarding the burial of a woman in 1896.84 As this burial predated the lease of the New Territories in 1898 and the fact that the cemetery was adjacent to several villages in the Kowloon City area, Po Kong Po Cemetery might have been an extension of some villagers' burial ground,85

A year later, another Chinese Christian Cemetery was authorized ‘on the hillside about 200 feet to the North of Kowloon Walled City, measuring, on the North 208'9,' on the East 208'9' and on the West 208'9,' and defined by boundary stones.' This cemetery still exists today as the oldest surviving cemetery on the Kowloon Peninsula.
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