Bukit Brown Cemetery

Bukit Brown Cemetery, also known as the Bukit Brown Municipal Cemetery or the Bukit Brown Chinese Cemetery, was a cemetery in Singapore. It opened in 1922 and acted as a Chinese burial ground until its closure in 1973. Bukit Brown Cemetery is the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China and is also the location of many of Singapore's earliest pioneers.

History
Bukit Brown Cemetery was named after 19th-century British merchant George Henry Brown (1826–1882). He arrived in Singapore in the 1840s and lived here till his death after an accident in Penang on 5 October 1882.

Brown purchased land on a hill which he called Mount Pleasant and built a cottage on it called Fern Cottage. As the land belonged to him, it was commonly referred to as Brown's Hill, translated locally to Bukit Brown.

Brown sold the land to Mootapa Chitty and Lim Chu Yi who later sold the land to three Hokkien Ong clan members – Ong Hew Ko, Ong Ewe Hai, and Ong Chong Chew – who in the 1870s turned the land into a cemetery for Chinese people of the Ong clan with the surname, known as the Seh Ong Cemetery. All 3 of them were buried at Bukit Brown Cemetery after their deaths.

In 1919, the government acquired the land after pressure had been put on them to open a municipal cemetery for the Chinese, despite the resistance from the Kongsi. It was then opened as Bukit Brown Municipal Cemetery on 1 January 1922. In 1923, the road leading up to Bukit Brown Cemetery was named Bukit Brown Road, also after Brown.

Another road leading up to the cemetery was named Kheam Hock Road, after Tan Kheam Hock (1862–1922), a Singaporean politician.

By 1929, 40% of Chinese deaths were buried at Bukit Brown Cemetery. It was closed in 1973 with about 100,000 graves. In 1965, the Public Works Department exhumed 237 graves to realign Lornie Road off Adam Road.

From 2011 to 2012, after the area was designated for residential development, many activists were upset by this decision as Bukit Brown Cemetery was 'a distinctive slice of the multi-ethnic country's fast disappearing heritage.' This included exhuming 3700 graves to make space for an 8-lane highway.

In 2012, it was originally announced by Minister of State for National Development Tan Chuan-Jin that 5000 graves would make way for a new 4-lane road that would cut through the cemetery. This number was later reduced to 3746 on 19 March 2012. It was also revealed that the rest of the cemetery would make way for a new public housing town in about 40 years time. In 2014, Bukit Brown Cemetery was named on the World Monuments Watch as an 'at risk site'.

The National Archives of Singapore (NAS) digitised and released the burial registers of the cemetery between April 1922 and December 1972 online, as well as a map of the cemetery to help descendants check if their ancestor's graves were affected by the development.

In 2016, Bukit Brown Cemetery's gates, that were installed back in the 1920s, were removed from their original posts, cleaned and repaired, and reinstalled at the mouth of a new access road near its original location. In 2018, Bukit Brown Road was replaced by a section of the Lornie Highway.

Notable burials

 * Tan Lark Sye (1897–1972), Singaporean businessman
 * Ong Boon Tat, founder of New World Amusement Park
 * Wi Peck Hay, the wife of Lim Nee Soon
 * Lim Chong Pang (1904–1956), Singaporean businessman and racehorse owner
 * Tan Kim Ching (1829–1892), Singaporean politician and businessman
 * Cheang Hong Lim (1825–1893), Chinese opium merchant and philanthropist
 * Tan Kheam Hock (1862–1922), Singaporean politician
 * Gan Eng Seng (1844–1899), Chinese philanthropist
 * Lee Choo Neo (1895–1947), Singapore physician