Rumah 1916, located in Batu Gajah, Perak, sees the AlBakri family heirs uniting to preserve its 100-year-old heritage. Their collective efforts aim to protect the historic home’s architectural integrity and cultural significance for future generations. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
If you’re coming from Ipoh, the Batu Gajah heritage driving trail follows Jalan Pusing onto Jalan Kelab before it curves around to head up Jalan Changkat. It is punctuated by landmark heritage buildings with the overlapping narratives of the town’s diverse communities.
I’m in a car with my guide Sundralingam and my friend Datuk Zahim Albakri, eager to visit both the Sri Subramaniyar Swami Kovil Temple and Jalan Mustafar Al Bakri.
Yes, Zahim’s grandfather does have a road named after him.
History is ever so charming when retold through living oral recollection.
Batu (stone) Gajah (elephant) lies on the banks of Sungai Kinta where a line of white boulders resembling elephants crossing the river sit squatly in the river waters. Local folklore insists these were once flesh and blood elephants that faced-off in a meet-and-greet with the menacing mythical giantess, Sang Kelembai, and were thus cast to stone.
Situated within the Sungai Terap district, Batu Gajah was developed under its titular chief, the Sri Amar DiRaja, in the early 19th century. Evolving from a single settlement named Kampung Terap, Batu Gajah rose to become the British administrative centre for the Kinta Valley by 1884, at the height of the “Tin Rush” in Perak.
British governance is imprinted in the hybrid architecture of this town, specifically in the Changkat area.
The former Wah Onn Theatre has long ceased selling tickets since Yip Sai Kow, a Taiping businessman, first brought celluloid entertainment to the town in the 1950s. Like other standalone cinemas in the country, its relevance has sadly faded. Its shell today remains on land belonging to the Sri Subramaniyar Swami Kovil Temple next door.
Built in 1928 by K. Malaiperumal Pillai who was responsible for building much of Batu Gajah’s infrastructure, there is a quiet beauty within the vibrancy of this holy space.
Statues of garlanded deities watch as we walk bare-foot, breathing in air scented with sandalwood and jasmine. Malaiperumal also founded the first Government English School with 30 students in 1907.
The Old Railway Station is now a food court selling Nasi Ayam Railway.
A view of the European Hospital in Batu Gajah. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
The lively breakfast crowd fills the air with chatter, bravely competing with the occasional chug and screech of passing trains along the nearby fence. Once, steam locomotives linked Batu Gajah to Pusing; today, the Electric Train Service smoothly arrives from Ipoh at the New Railway Station a few kilometers away.
Directly across the road, two delightful wooden bungalows with tin roofs sit on stilts.
In bygone days, these were the homes, a convenient two-minute commuting stroll away, of the station master and his assistant.
The Changkat cluster
At the other end of this heritage drive lays the Changkat cluster. Buildings built during the British administration to serve the community. The former Batu Gajah Court House complex of three linked stately buildings was built in 1892.
A warren of different government departments is housed here today including the Administrative Centre for the Kinta District and the Development and Welfare Offices.
The nearby European Hospital exudes nostalgic charm, housed in a graceful two-storey mock Tudor timber house adorned with a wraparound veranda.
Now a nurses’ centre, there is a gallery upstairs showcasing past medical practices and armamentarium.
The displays are fascinating and a touch, terrifying. Metal dilators and clamps!
A devotee seen at the Subramaniyar Swami Kovil Temple. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
Across the road, the Batu Gajah Government Hospital was built in 1880. It is one of the oldest hospitals in Perak and a truly fine example of an intact pre-war hospital still in use. Its abundant vegetable garden is tended to by patients as part of their recuperation; the harvest sold locally.
Famous past patients include our reigning Her Majesty Raja Zarith Sofiah, Queen of Malaysia, who was born here.
A short walk on is Saint Joseph Church. It was built in 1882 after Roman Catholicism was introduced to the Kinta region by the French Societe de Missions Etrangeres, which established Saint Joseph’s parish in Batu Gajah. Challenge yourself to climb the spiral staircase up to the steeple where a leaning ladder leads to the belfry.
Magnificent wooden house
I had heard of the Alma Baker House years ago when I’d visited the unfinished ruins of Kellie’s Castle on the outskirts of Batu Gajah. Built by a Scotsman, William Kellie-Smith, local lore pitted him as a rival to Charles Alma Baker.
The New Zealand surveyor, miner and planter was certainly one of colonial Malaya’s more colourful characters, who came to Batu Gajah in the late 1890s.
With the fortune he amassed, Alma Baker built a magnificent wooden house, elevated on stone pillars, overlooking the Batu Gajah Race course. It had a central lookout tower, from which the family watched the races.
In his biography Imperial Patriot: Charles Alma Baker And The History Of The Limestones Downs, Barrie McDonald wrote: “Baker’s new mansion was set in extensive trees and gardens in Changkat Road and firmly located in the small European enclave on the ridge above Batu Gajah where it was designed to challenge the splendour of the District Magistrate’s residence. The ground floor of the house was mostly taken up with a large living room that accommodated with ease a large dining table which could comfortably seat a dozen people full-size billiard table. To the rear of the house there was a suite of offices and to the side a large kitchen and a servants’ wing. Upstairs, there were five bedrooms (most with their own dressing-rooms and bathrooms) opening off a huge sitting room (some 60 feet long and half as wide) that extended into the area above the pillared entrance and offered a view of the main garden.”
Patrons having a meal at the Old Railway Station in Batu Gajah. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
Such was the notoriety of the man and his house that The Perak Pioneer reported somewhat wickedly in 1894: “Mr Alma Baker is building a fine house facing the Race Course, to be called, probably, Goodwood or Ascot, or some appropriate name of the kind – or maybe, ‘the Bakeries’.”
Today all that remains on site are the supporting stone pillars, still much visited, such is the fame of this house.
The Alma Baker House itself has long been sold and dismantled. The new owners reassembled the house in Terengganu though without its watchtower.
Kerani Ahmad’s House
By contrast a home that remains very much intact and in situ is Kerani Ahmad’s House. Careful reconstructive repairs were carried out by the Perak state in 2009 here at 37, Jalan Aman, next to the correctional facilities of the Batu Gajah Prison (1888). (Based on the standard design of 19th century British Prisons, the extraordinary heroic Sybil Kathigasu from neighbouring Papan was an inmate here during the Japanese Occupation).
The late Sultan Azlan Muhibbuddin Shah of Perak, who was the ninth Yang di-Pertuan Agung, was also born in Batu Gajah. This modest wooden house belonged to his maternal grandfather Toh Indera Wangsa Ahmad, who was born Ahmad Taib in Kuala Kangsar.
Ahmad moved to Batu Gajah where he worked as a clerk at the British Administrative Office, earning great respect and the moniker Kerani (clerk) Ahmad. The late Sultan Azlan, and his brother Raja Baharom, were raised here as children by their mother Hajjah Hatijah.
Today, Kerani Ahmad’s House is open to the public as a gallery.
The Kerani Ahmad House, which is open to the public as a gallery. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
A series of photographs document Sultan Azlan’s life from childhood to adolescence; giving us glimpses of his early school days at the Malay School in Batu Gajah moving on to the Government English School (yes, the one established by Malaiperumal), where he was appointed School Captain in 1948.
A skilled sportsman, there are photographs of the cricket, rugby, hockey and badminton teams the dashing young Raja Azlan was part of.
Later the young prince was sent to the elite Malay College in Kuala Kangsar before earning his law degree at Nottingham University in Britain. The house, its planks painted white, sits on stone pillars and is divided into a main house with a separate but connected kitchen at the back.
Rumah 1916
The most exciting house restoration in Batu Gajah has just commenced 20m from the banks of the Kinta River at No.15, Lorong Mat Saman, with an entrance on Jalan Kelab.
This majestic wood and stone structure, its long rambling history dating back to 1916 when it was constructed, is a physical manifestation of Colonial, Malay and Chinese architecture.
Rumah 1916 (The 1916 House) was mothballing in mysterious decay until the restoration project began in April this year.
I am told the house has been struck by lightning at least four times, leading experts to believe the acre it sits on is ore rich land.
There is perhaps a cross-pollination of myth-making and reality attached to all Grand Old Houses.
The Royal English School blackboard stands as a poignant reminder of cherished school days gone by, evoking memories of learning and camaraderie. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
Rumah 1916 has been wrongly attributed as the Kerani Ahmad House in at least two books on the Kinta Valley.
This mistake possibly owing to its obvious one time magnificence – surely it could only have been a ruler’s childhood home. The reality today is that the property is jointly owned by the three Albakri siblings.
I was invited by the youngest, Zahim, into this corner of his world where one can still find a little mystery within living memory. Untangling ownership and the family’s variegated noble ancestry is an ongoing task. Bear with me.
Puan Hajjah Lailaton Halaliah Dato Sri Haji Mustapha AlBakri (aka Wan Chik), the youngest and only surviving sibling of Datuk Ikmal Hisham Albakri’s (Zahim’s father) and the last known person to have lived in Rumah 1916, insists that the house was not (as initially believed) owned and built by her maternal grandfather, Toh Amar DiRaja Sulaiman, but rather it belonged to his first wife, Andak Jijah binti Domba who may have been gifted the house by her father, Toh Sedewa Raja Domba, one of the Orang Besar Perak from Sungai Raia, whose house in Kampung Kepayang is believed to be the inspiration for Rumah 1916.
Still with me?
According to Wan Chik, the upstairs anjung area above the porch, held a permanent pelamin (wedding dais) as all weddings within the extended family would be held there.
Last month, Rumah 1916 was open to visitors with a temporary exhibition themed 'Kisah Kinta 1916'. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
After Wan Chik vacated the house in the 1950s, two rooms on the ground floor of Rumah 1916 were utilised for religious classes before the Royal English School took over the premises from 1962 to 1988.
Computer classes followed before the house was abandoned in 1997. Through all these incarnations, Rumah 1916 was internally renovated to fit the needs of these educational establishments.
Pillars were removed, classroom partitions erected. From 1993 until April 2024, Mr Vijayan, a former student of the Royal English School occupied the back rooms of the house as caretaker. The cavernous space at the back of the house, Zahim tells me, was where his great-grandfather, Toh Amar DiRaja Sulaiman would “park” his elephant.
The rehabilitation of Rumah 1916 back to its former glory is currently being chronicled in a documentary by filmmaker Ansell Tan.
God’s Little Acre
The unlatched entrance gate to the burial ground swings open, almost in a spiritual resonance, as we approach the Anglican cemetery known as God’s Little Acre.
So much about life can be gleaned from monuments of death. Dating back to 1891, the remains of more than 600 planters, miners, police and military personnel, many of whom were early pioneers in Perak, are interred here.
His old mansion may no longer stand in Batu Gajah, but Charles Alma Baker is buried here.
The grave of Charles Alma Baker, a surveyor, miner and planter from New Zealand, who came to Batu Gajah in the late 1890s. Photo: Shireen Zainudin
Most of the lives remembered at God’s Little Acre – British soldiers, Gurkhas, and planters – were lost during the Malayan Emergency, declared after the murders of planters A.E. Walker, Ian Christian, and John Allison on June 16, 1948.
Their graves are specially commemorated here.
An annual remembrance ceremony is held on the second Saturday of June every year at God’s Little Acre. Astonishing and moving, descendants fly in from all over the world to pay their respects.
Perhaps this year, they might also visit Rumah 1916 after.
This feature was commissioned under Think City’s Cultural Economy Catalytic project for the Northern States of Malaysia, supported by the Ministry of Finance.
