Sunday 7 January 2018

Desker's gable

Gable at Desker Road. Pic taken 4 Jan 2018.

I haven't been gable hunting for some time in Singapore. But recently I came across this nice one at Desker Road. See, it has a nice design on the side. The steep knob at the tip of the gable suggested wood element or water element.

In Chinese architecture, the five different shapes of gable ends denote the five elements: wood, fire, metal, water and earth. (Reference: Handy Guide for Appreciating Chinese Architecture). Apparently, different gable ends were employed to counter the adversity of the land which the houses were seated on.

The region around Desker Road was once swampland, so the wood element depicted by the gable ends may be used to counter the earth element. (Purely conjecture on my part!)

Desker Road, with its rich history, was named after a butcher, Andre Filipe Desker, a resident in the area who opened Singapore's largest butchery during the 1860s. BTW, I have great respect for butchers since I was a kid when I trotted to market with mum. The butcher with his blood-splatted white singlet rolled up to his rounded belly, would nearly always slip a bonus piece of pork into the the lot that mum wanted, quietly wrapping them up with newspaper. (Many a times, I would be sent back to the market with the "bonus" as mum insisted that we need to return it to the dear old butcher.)

Anyway, back to the story of this Desker Road butcher -- he was from Malacca, married in Singapore and eventually had 13 children. He was known for his generous donations to schools and churches.

Old Gables Again: http://bitspiece.blogspot.sg/2015/06/old-gables-again-along-havelock.html

Old Gables: http://bitspiece.blogspot.sg/2014/06/old-gables.html

7 comments:

streetsing said...

Interesting write out on Gables, it's architecture and the history of Desker road :) I do like to walk around this area because of its interesting shop houses too. :)

Lo Tien Yin said...

So nice to hear from you! I tried the Bengali food at Shapla in Desker Road. It was billed the best Bengali restaurant in Singapore. But I didn't think the food was great. Also, limited choice.

streetsing said...

The only Indian cuisine I tried in this area is the Race course road fish head curry.. yummy :)

Lo Tien Yin said...

Ilove fish fishave head curry! What is the name of the restaurant?

streetsing said...

It was the one at Race Course road called Banana leaf. Went there twice, skip the “ flower crap” , if you can, its pricey and not meaty compared to Sri Lanka crap.

Lo Tien Yin said...

Great! Thanks for the tips.

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