On an escarpment, 250m above the city of Freetown, is the small settlement of Hill Station. This was an exclusive resort built for the British colonial administrators and staff between 1902 and 1904. Modelled on the Indian hill stations (such as Simla) and the sanatorium at Aburi, Ghana, it aimed to provide cooler, more healthier abodes for the Colonists. Ronald Ross’s recent discoveries on mosquitoes and malaria also prompted the move away from the city, and the increasing desire for racially segregated housing and cordon sanitaires.
Bungalow at Hill Station
The houses were exported as kits from the UK ready to be assembled and clad on site. Hefty concrete bases are topped with steel frames that provide living accommodation at first floor level . Access is via a perpendicular staircase leading to a verandah. The raised bungalows catch the breeze and offer far reaching views over the forest, city, and ocean below. A club offered the only source of entertainment for the residents of this leafy, isolated, community.
Covered staircase entrance
How to access the Hill Station was solved by building a narrow gauge railway line from the city. It operated to suit the office hours of the government officials, and ran from 1904 until 1929 when it was replaced by road and bus service. Each day the officials would commute into town and return at the end of the day to their verandah’s and billiards at the Club House. It was an elaborate and hugely expensive experiment that benefited just a few dozen individuals. To build and maintain a railway through this challenging terrain was an immense task.
New build on left with origin Hill Station residence on rightView from Hill station over FreetownHill StationOne of the surviving 12 original Hill Station houses – with modifications to base
Today, just 12 of the original 24 two-storey houses survive, still occupied by civil servants and their families (and still without a piped water supply). Many of the houses are being modified and extended, and the large plots split-up and sold to facilitate new development.
Professor Ken Ndomhina picked us up in his SUV and we drove through Fourah Bay College, Freetown to the Faculty of Architecture building of the University of Sierra Leone. My colleague, Iain Jackson, had been invited to give a lecture on the architecture of Fry and Drew in Western Africa. We parked up outside a two storey, white and green building with interesting post-modern ornament that included fluted ionic columns which captured swirling red dust in their profiles.
Iain Jackson giving a lecture to staff and students at Fourah Bay CollegeFourah Bay College: School of Architecture
When this Architecture School opened four years ago, twenty-one students enrolled, and the first cohort is about to graduate. The school now boasts around 150 students across four year groups.
Creating a new School of Architecture is a wonderful opportunity – the chance to ‘start again’ and to develop a new programme from scratch is very special. Equally the challenges are great – not least recruiting staff as there are only 25 accredited architects in the whole country.
Student Models: Fourah Bay CollegeSchool of Architecture at Fourah Bay College
Yet progress is being made. Once the lecture was complete, we enjoyed light refreshments and conversation with local staff who had been trained far and wide in Cyprus, Morocco and England. They had returned ‘home’ to be involved with this exciting and growing project. The School is preparing for Commonwealth Association of Architects accreditation. It has a hands-on approach to teaching with many 1:1 scale building experiments and model-making, supplemented by history, environmental design, and building technology.
Student Representative: Rose Imah Paul giving a vote of thanks.Ken Ndomhina and Faculty with Paul Robinson, Ewan Harrison, and Iain JacksonStaff and Students in the Courtyard
Although change is slow the University of Sierra Leone architectural department vision is strong: to see men and women from Sierra Leone, trained as architects to positively impact the developing built environment of the nation. And to establish the role of architect within their communities. Knowing this, it made it a thrilling privilege to pose with this next generation for a celebratory photograph once the event ended.
As part of our project to research the architecture of the United Africa Company (UAC) we’re visiting Freetown in Sierra Leone.
We spent the first day looking around the commercial business area wrapped around the giant cotton tree. The city grid was set out by the Sierra Leone Company surveyors in the 1790s and its wide streets and blocks are largely intact. Interspersed among the commercial properties are churches, houses, and schools, some dating back to the 19th Century.
The Cotton Tree, central Freetown
Adjacent to the Cotton Tree are the municipal offices, post office and former telephone exchange, and the major bank branches. Nickson and Borys designed a major branch for Barclays DCO and Ronald Ward for British Bank of West Africa (more on these by Ewan Harrison shortly). The Sierra Leone Central Bank is also located here – now refurbished and with its concrete mural sadly covered over with signage (designed by Ministry of Works in 1964).
GPO and Telephone Exchange, Nickson and BorysMunicipal Offices, Nickson and BorysBank of British West Africa, Ronald WardBank of Sierra Leone, Ministry of WorksBarclays DCO Bank, Nickson and Borys
Further downhill, towards the old railway station and harbour, are the major merchant stores and retailers.
We visited the old Kingsway Stores – now a bank – but still with its deco-inspired flourishes at each end of the facade. The CFAO is still clearly recognisable, and several other stores display strong characteristics of GB Ollivant and Leventis properties we’ve seen elsewhere in Western Africa.
Former Kingsway Department StoreRetail: architect unknownLuvian Building, architect unknownFormer CFAO Building
Heading further eastwards beyond the older city grid is ‘PZ Roundabout’ named after trading company Patterson Zochonis. Here the formality of the central business area gives way to more lively street markets and less formal city planning.
Further along Fourah Bay Road is the old Fourah Bay College building. The College was founded in 1827 in association with Durham University and was the first western style educational establishment in West Africa. It was mainly focused on missionary training. The delicate front verandah is formed with steel members bolted together and the ruinous state of the building has further exposed the steel structure inside. The beams were made by Glengarnock Iron and Steel Co in Ayrshire, Scotland and shipped out to Sierra Leone during the construction of the college building in the 1840s.
Old Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, with construction starting in 1845, work supervised by Rev Edward Jones.
The college is located just a short distance from the sea, and what is now the busy port of Cline Town. Here the major shipping company Elder Dempster had their offices. They commissioned James Cubitt to design their premises in 1958. Cubitt also designed the Elder Dempster tower in Lagos, Nigeria, but rather than a dramatic tower overlooking the marina, here there is a more restrained horizontal solution with projecting concrete brise soleil and a porte-cochère. Inside the booking hall is a dramatic spiral staircase that wraps around what resembles a ship’s funnel. Warehouses and storage sheds dominate the area, including the former UAC stores opposite the National Railway Museum.
Former Elder Dempster Offices, James CubittInside Elder Dempster: waffle ceiling and spiral staircasedetail of the exteriorUAC warehouse Cline Town
There’s an impressive collection of architecture in this historic port city. In the UAC archive there are extensive photographic albums from 1915 through the 1960s documenting many of the streets and buildings we visited. Our task now is to identify more of these structures, and to research the history that resulted in their commissioning, design, and wider significance.
Transnational Architecture Group 