Good practice in restoration work : the case of restoring the roof of the Tang Ancestral Hall at Ha Tsuen, New Territories, Hong Kong

Abstract

In Hong Kong, the legislation to protect Declared Monuments is the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (Chapter 53), which was enacted in 1976 for the protection of Hong Kong’s heritages. While the Ordinance protects the Declared Monuments, it also prohibits any work being carried out on the Monuments except under permit granted by the Antiquities Authority (a role held by the Secretary for Development). This causes a lot of extra time and effort in carrying out repair and maintenance work on these Monuments.

Besides Declared Monuments, Hong Kong also has an inventory of Graded Historic Buildings, in which such buildings are given Grade I, II and III status with the first grade being of “outstanding merit,” the second of “special merit” and third grade of “some merits.” However, these Graded Historic Buildings have no legal protection, and there is no restriction in the way work is carried out. Under this situation, owners or users of Graded Historic Buildings can carry out their own repair and maintenance work without due consideration of the buildings’ heritage significance.

Such heritage insensitive work is most problematic for traditional Chinese heritage buildings mostly found in villages of the New Territories, such as ancestral halls, temples, study halls, village houses and pagodas. Many villagers do not have enough knowledge in repairing and maintaining their heritage buildings, and they employ unsuitable contractors and workers, who carry out the repair and maintenance like the renovation of a modern building.

Another problem is that the villagers may not realize the important features of their historic buildings and just replace any damaged or worn parts with new one using modern materials and techniques. They do not have in-depth consideration for the heritage values of the buildings. They think that they can minimize future repair and maintenance problem by shortcuts. For example, paint is applied to fair-face green-brick walls, cement sand mortar is used to repair brick joints. Such works affect the appearance of the historic buildings as well as accelerate the deterioration of the historic building fabric.

As explained above, the repair and maintenance of a traditional Chinese heritage building can only be properly done when there is good understanding of the traditional materials and techniques involved. The scope of this dissertation is to contribute to this understanding by documenting the detailed restoration work of a traditional Chinese heritage building type in Hong Kong. The ancestral hall is chosen because it is arguably the most important village building type. The dissertation will focus on a case example – the Tang Ancestral Hall at Ha Tsuen, a Declared Monument. This case is chosen because the author, as a technical staff of the Antiquities and Monuments Office, has been personally involved in the restoration work as well as repair and maintenance work carried out on this building from 2008 to 2014.

It would be too large a topic if every detail of the restoration work is documented, and this would exceed the limits of this dissertation. A more feasible scope is to focus on a part of the restoration process to provide a starting point for future researchers to complete the documentation on other parts of the restoration. The restoration of the roof is chosen, because for a traditional building with tile-roof, brick walls and timber structures, the roof is arguably the most important component of the work process.