The family story behind 30 Bedok Road - our “plank‑wall shophouse with zinc roof”

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In our earlier post, we introduced 30 Bedok Road, the modest shophouse known as Fang Rong, remembered by many as a half‑tailor, half‑barber establishment before redevelopment erased it from the landscape. What makes this little building especially meaningful to us is that it carried a connection to our own family.

Houses can be owned, like ours at 10J Bedok Road – but we still had to pay monthly ground rent to our landlords, the Queks. And if we failed to make the monthly rent, the landlord reserved the right to have our house demolished – such was the precarious nature of living in kampongs in those days. Others like this shophouse was rented and the owner pays the ground rent on its behalf.

Well, the owner of this shophouse at 30 Bedok Road was our grandfather. Before the renumbering exercise of early 1964, the property was known as 630‑A Bedok Road. Our grandfather purchased it in September 1950 for $4,700. He owned the structure, but still paid ground rent to the landowners of Mukim 27 Bedok. That rent was $5 a month in 1955, later raised to $7 in 1971, and he also paid the property tax amounted to $86.40 every six months. But it should be noted that this property was neither leasehold nor freehold with no title deed.

When our grandfather passed away in early 1955, he bequeathed the shophouse to our father. From then on, our father continued to collect rent from the tenants while also settling the ground rent and property tax with the landowner and Singapore government.

The entire shophouse was rented to Mr Fong for $40 a month, a rate that could not be increased due to the Control of Rent Act of 1947. Yet within that fixed arrangement, the interior unilaterally evolved: half the shophouse was sublet to a tailor. It is likely that Mr Fong either operated the hairdressing portion himself or sublet it out as well – a seemingly common practice in kampong commerce then.

After more than two decades of this arrangement, our father eventually sold the shophouse to Mr Fong for $5,000 in 1976, with Mr Fong thereafter taking over the monthly ground‑rent and property tax obligations.

In the end, this simple, humble yet practical plank‑wall structure carried within it a layered story of family stewardship, kampong economics, and the everyday negotiations that shaped life along Bedok Road – reminding us that such was life for small shops of the past.

17 September 1950 purchase of 30 Bedok Road (then 630-A) from a Mr Chin


Sourced and published with permission from the Singapore Land Authority
showing Mukim 27 where our kampong was located

31 Jan 1962 receipt of payment of property tax for 30 Bedok Road

19 October 1976 deed of sale of 30 Bedok Road to Fang Feng Yan


22 July 1971 note indicating ground rent of $7 for 30 Bedok Road, up from $5 and that this property has no title deed and neither leasehold nor freehold

6 June 1955 letter indicating the ground rent of $5 for 630A, later 30 Bedok Road





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