Garden Party at King's Pavilion?

The building originally built and used as the living quarter on Government Hill for the second British Resident (BR), Sir Hugh Low, and his successors was named "The King's Pavilion" or KP in short.

Sir Hugh Low a botanist experimented successfully the propagation of the hevea brasiliensis (india rubber) seedlings brought by Ridley.The first plants grown were behind the KP, whose area was contiguous with the later established Agricultural station grounds. Therefore the plant next to the District Office which didnot exist during Hugh Low's time is certainly not the oldest, as claimed in the signboard put up beside it.

After 1948 the most senior British colonial officer, re-designated as the British Adviser(BA) no longer resided in KP. So the Govt decided to give it to the MCKK in 1951 as residence and school of the most junior classes. The former GuardHouse, manned by the Sikh Sepahis/Sepoys
was turned into the Surau-cum-Quran classroom for KP. A portion of the KP facing East was for some time used as the KKangsar District Drainage&Irrigation Dept. The Resident-Masters of KP were Mr Davidson (1951-4), Mr Wilson (1954-5) aka Anthony Burgess, Mr Morley (1955-6)and one other after that.

When the MCKK, pursuant to the new Education policy of post-Merdeka became fully secondary,in 1960, KP was returned to the Govt. It was then used as the new premises for the Govt English Girls School or GEGS for short (now re-named as Sekolah Raja Perempuan Kalsom)re-located from its previous location, across the road from the newly-opened third cinema in KKangsar, the Rex.
The other cinemas two were the Grand Talkies and the Lido. During a recent visit to K.Kangsar,
I observe that the special architectural beauty of the hilltop former KP has been detrimentally
afected by the construction of new school buildings, blocking the view of the KP original buiilding fro the RestHouse and the fronting KKTown-BktCandan. The old guardhouse and former surau of KP is still intact. However the few rubber trees and a 'keramat' grave behind the guardhouse has disappeared.

Mr NJ Ryan the MCKK Headmaster (1959-65) managed to obtain one of the two field guns standing in front of the KP for display at the BigSchool flagmast square, and he named a new dormitory building, completed in 1963, "The Pavilion", used initially by Sixth Form boarders. The Pavilion's first Resident-Master was Mr Bennett, an EnglishLiterature teacher, who had been transferred early 1963 from the PenangFreeSchool. Ryan had also asked that the alignment of The Pavilion be turned 180* so that it doesnot face the main road. We asked him why and he answered he didnot want the public to see boys walking along the corridors half-naked or almost-naked as they would surely do.