Telok Blangah Hill
7th Highest Hill in Singapore. Located within Telok Blangah Hill Park, and is a main highlight of the Southern Ridges trail system. A series of grand terraces lead up to the summit, which used to host a Buddhist temple.
Height: 93 m [Trigonometric height according to the map: Singapore 1:50,000 Series SMU 075, Edition 9 (Mapping Unit, Ministry of Defense, Singapore, 2010)]
Location: 1°16'44.0"N 103°48'38.2"E
View of the south side of the Telok Blangah Hill ridge.
Route to Summit: The easiest access is to take the Southern Ridges Trail. You can also drive up to Telok Blangah Park, and walk up to the summit with gazebo, terraces and a grandview.
Other Names: Green Hill, Mount Faber 2, Mount Washington, Qianfo Shan 千佛山 (Thousand Buddha Mountain) and finally, Telok Blangah Hill
History:
Much of the writeup below is excerpted from this blogpage.
Before 1845, the long ridge that includes today's Mount Faber and Telok Blangah Hill (TBH) was simply called "Tulloh Blangan Hills" or other variations of 'Telok Blangah Hills', after the area along the southern coast of Singapore (See Figure 2). In 1845, the hills were renamed Mount Faber after Charles Edward Faber of the Madras Engineers, who had overseen the building of a road leading to one of the summits of the hill and establishing there a signal station and flagstaff.
The hill that is today's TBH made its mark on a map in "Sketch plan of Mount Faber and Pasir Panjang" (See Figure Below), published in 1891 by H.E. McCallum, the surveyor general at that time. In this map, TBH is named 'Green Hill' with an altitude of 304 ft (92.7 m).
The 1898 edition of the "Map Of the Island of Singapore And Its Dependencies" contains several interesting details (See Figure below, retrieved from NAS), TBH appears in this map as 'Mt Faber 2' with an altitude of 312 ft (~95.1 m) , while on the same map, 'Mt Faber 1' denotes Faber Point, with an altitude of 350 ft (~106.7 m). Interestingly, there is also on the map, two shorter hills away from the main ridge, 'Telok Blanga 1' and 'Telok Blanga 2', at 113.5 ft (34.6 m) and 111 ft (33.8 m), respectively. Comparing with more recent maps, this peaks correspond to today's Bukit Purmei and Henderson Park, respectively.
Another hill name of interest is 'Mount Washington'. Starting from sometime in the early 1900s, The name 'Mount Washington' started to be associated with a hill very near to TBH. In 'Map Of Singapore Town Within Municipal Limits 1906' (See Figure below, retrieved from NAS), Mount Washington denotes a spot, east of the summit of TBH (marked by a triangle in the Figure below) with a house on it. In 1906, the house shown is one probably belonging to Cheng Keng Lee. A newspaper advertisement in 1916 explicitly equate Mount Washington with this property. The plot was later sold to the Alkaffs, and Alkaff mansion was then built there, which still stands there today. Numerous references of Alkaff mansion through the decades mention that it is located on Mount Washington.
There are also maps that label TBH as Mount Washington. For example, a 1918 'Map Showing The Swamps And The Chinese Burial Grounds Near Alexandra Road' by RH Young shows Mt Washington to be TBH. Perhaps it is not really that surprising to extend the grand sounding name to this higher peak (relative to the location of the Alkaff Mansion).
Sometime in the 1960s, TBH acquired an unofficial name as Qianfo Shan (千佛山), or 'Thousand Buddha Mountain'. TBH may have have acquired this unofficial name when a temple structure by the name of 'Thousand Buddha Hall' was built in the 1966 on the summit (See postcard scan below). An interesting short article on this can be found in this blog.
Officially it seems however, 'Mt Faber 2' continued to be the name of TBH for a very long time, it appeared on military topographical maps from 1939 onwards, up till as recently as on the 1987 1:50000 Topographical Map Singapore (See the title map on the top of this page). In the 1980s, the new town of Telok Blangah was built on the foot of the whole of TBH/Mount Faber Ridge, and a new park "Telok Blangah Hill Park" was completed in 1988 which included TBH. In the process, the 'Thousand Buddha Hall' was demolished, and a gazebo and terraces replaced the TBH summit area (See Fig. 7 and 8). Although there are no 'official' names on subsequent maps to denote this peak as 'Telok Blangah Hill', I assume here that the 'Hill' in 'Telok Blangah Hill Park' must have the same name as the park, and that TBH, Telok Blangah Hill 're-acquired' its current name with the creation of the namesake park in 1988.
Other Information: Telok Blangah Hill has several subsidiary hills. The most famous is Mt Washington, on which Alkaff Mansion is on. Another hill of note is Sugar Loaf Hill, from which the Henderson Waves Bridge launched across Henderson Road to Mt Faber Park.
Photo Gallery:
View of the Telok Blangah Hill summit (right) and Sugar Loaf Hill (left) from a block of flat in Telok Blangah Crescent. You may be able to see the gazebo on the summit of Telok Blangah Hill. You can also see Henderson Waves bridge sticking out from near the summit of Sugar Loaf Hill (2021-01-16)
View of the Telok Blangah Hill summit from near the Mount Faber Summit (2020-12-26)