ENG-1958 — Page 191

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

It was not until 1952 that the Survey Office was able to take stock and organize itself for proper land survey. In the following year a systematic detailed survey at a scale of 1/600 (50′ = 1′′) was started in the built-up areas of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and over 3,400 acres have already been completed.

In 1955 contouring was started (mainly by tachymetric methods) on all marginal land ripe for development; these surveys are plotted at a scale of 1/2,400 (200′ = 1′′) and 37 square miles have been completed.

Precise levelling was started in 1955 to check the few remaining Bench Marks, and to establish new ones. By the end of 1958 levels around Hong Kong Island for a distance of 25 miles and around the New Territories for a distance of 54 miles had been completed. Levels between the Island and the Kowloon peninsula are tied across in two places, at Tsim Sha Tsui and the Lei Yue Mun Straits.

The New Territories were surveyed at the turn of the century by Survey of India personnel who divided the cultivated areas into convenient districts and made a purely local survey of each. In 1929 Brigadier Winterbotham, then Director of Colonial Surveys, recommended that these individual surveys be revised and tied into the Hong Kong Grid to produce an overall survey. This, however, was not done at the time and it was not until some years after the war, when land development in the New Territories was becoming more important, that it was decided to carry out a resurvey to a scale of 1/1,200 (100′ : 1"). Despite a shortage of Land staff, the New Territories Survey Section has surveyed and plotted 36 square miles, concentrating on those areas where development is already taking place or is likely to take place in the near future. The original funds for this survey were provided under a Colonial and Development Welfare scheme (see Appendix I).

Mapping in Hong Kong is left almost entirely to the Military Surveyor, and although excellent maps are produced, they are designed for military use and have certain disadvantages for the civilian user. Some small maps produced by the Survey Office and printed by the Government Printer have found a ready public