Videos
The following links will take you to a Youtube Channel in which we have collected a number of videos related to the work at Adam Park and the history of the estate. Most remarkable is a 1950’s home video of the estate which provides a fascinating insight into life on the estate immediately after the war years and captures the estate’s architecture and topography.
We will also make available a number of videos filmed on site showing the archaeology underway. This will hopefully provide a useful guide for future surveys across the island
The Morrisons at No.16 Adam Park in 1949
This home movie was taken in 1949 and shows Hugh Morrison and his wife Tibbie relaxing at home at No.16 Adam Park after the war. The couple were resident at the house at the outbreak of the war; Hugh was captured and sent to the Thai Burma Railroad, Tibbie was evacuated out with their daughter and managed to get home to Cupar in Fife. This film was sent in by their youngest son Andrew who was born after the war as the family once again lived at No.16. The film shows views of the garden and the surrounding houses providing the researchers with a fascinating insight into the battlefield terrain.
TAPP Survey No.19 – 3 Adam Park
On first glance at the research undertaken on Adam Park we would have thought that there would be very little of interest to be found at No.3 Adam Park. The house was at the quietest section of the defensive perimeter during the fighting and was only used as accommodation by the men of 8th Division Signals AIF. However there was more hidden below the surface than any of the team ever imagined.
TAPP – 3 Adam Park – Day 1 (Nov 2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggM1EsexzGA
TAPP – 3 Adam Park – Day 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdfXFgz-Q1I
TAPP – 3 Adam Park – Day 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-YQyoBYWqI
TAPP – 3 Adam Park – Day 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXmGdOrnHc0
TAPP Survey No.20 – 6 Adam Park
6 Adam Park tucked away in the shadow of its impressive neighbor at No.16, was, according to the histories, the scene of heavy fighting on the 14th February as D Company of the Cambridgeshires set about clearing out houses just beyond their perimeter. However the occupants of No.16 had other plans and a battle raged across the gardens. The Cambridgeshires firing line took up positions along the back of the garden at No.6. Would the archaeology shed light on what happened next?
TAPP – 6 Adam Park – Day 1 (Jan 2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXliSbFR8no
TAPP – 6 Adam Park– Day 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQJlHzXL78A
TAPP – 6 Adam Park– Day 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIfDYBTWtbM
TAPP – 6 Adam Park– Day 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP0iSm0xUOU
TAPP – 6 Adam Park– Battlefied Tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2hFGbrPWPM
TAPP Survey No.21 – No’s 13 and 14 Adam Park.: Cply Jack Cosford fought some of his battle in the front garden of 13 Adam Park as driver for the Cambridgeshire mortar platoon. He states that the mortar team under Sgt Bennerson undertook some successful fire missions from the position. The TAPP set out to identify the mortar positions.
TAPP – 13&14 Adam Park – Part 1 (June 2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtisWLz7Dl4
TAPP – 13&14 Adam Park – Part 2 (June 2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGPPZ1luZ6A
The search for the Adam Park Chapel took 6 years to complete. The definitive evidence came to light in June 2014. Here is an introduction to the search for the Adam Park Chapel
TAPP – 11 Adam Park – Chapel Mural?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIKp_1Ksw5A
In 2015 we finally finished the last planned survey at Adam Park. But there was to be one last hoorah for the dig team. Tenants at No159 Mount Pleasant had stumbled across a cache of ammunition in their garden. The TAPP team was sent into investigate the circumstances and there was once more than just ammunition buried in the garden.
TAPP – Mt Pleasant Dig – Day 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oRzhRnJ-fc
TAPP – Mt Pleasant Dig – Day 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYe4-u6SxKE
TAPP – Mt Pleasant Dig – Day 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNI1drtLbv4
TAPP – Mt Pleasant Dig – Day 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaskLK5kc7o
TAPP – Mt Pleasant Dig – Day 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgz7sc_4YDc
Jon Cooper conducts regular battlefield tours of the Sime Road and Hellfire Corner battle sites. Here is an edited version of this very popular tour
Battlefield Tour 26 Oct 14. – All things Bukit Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZSzAg02ZsY
The Battle for Bukit Brown – All Things Bukit Brown
Battlefield Archaeologist Jon Cooper visits the site of the defence of Hill 130 and recalls the action on the night of the 14th February that effectively sealed the fate of Singapore’s defenders. This video was taken before the new road was built across the site and is a timely reminder about the cost to heritage asked by the urbanization of Singapore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBSlUyps-hE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm8-MsBKJsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kt2BFSpGfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SsekyaiVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S0hfpK7jmg
The POW were assigned to the ‘Shrine Job’; the construction of the Syonan Jinja on the shores of MacRitchie Reservoir. Jon Cooper visits the site of the Sacred Bridge and reveals the archaeology lying beneath the surface of the reservoir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n10UX2i9co
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHCM3RFlKg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1zv7hX5Yug
Bukit Timah
Jon Cooper explores Bukit Timah Village and amidst the new build reveals a hidden WW2 battle site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcUtGeDw780
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQA1duradSM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmlSpG0VxwA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_TVFHf9Xns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rOANnHALU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1Sk3ehB7so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbLAEmeozsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orpZK2JYFP4
History from the Hills – Episode 5 – The War. This series of programmes looked at the history of the Bukit Brown Cemetery. This episode includes a section on the fight for Hill 130 and the search for missing Suffolk soldiers thought to have been buried in the cemetery grounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SfO-s9HgB0
The Fall of Singapore in Colour – Tinted and colour images of the fall of Singapore from the Japanese archives. Much of this footage appears in other programmes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1u-GdEyfvQ
The Fall of Singapore Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDu4fwfqEKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH__9zXB3KI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMk5i6Vr_w
World at War Series – Rise of Japan. Although now a little dated this 1970’s series telling includes interviews with veterans and features some classic black and white footage of the fall of Singapore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KJI9TwaEUk
BBC – Moving Half a Mountain
The brutal use of British prisoners of war by the Japanese to build a railway linking Thailand to Burma in 1943 was one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. For the first time in 70 years, British POWs and their Japanese captors, many now in their nineties, open their hearts to tell the story of what really happened on the ‘Death Railway’. Alongside the extraordinary experiences and stories of survival told by the British, their Japanese guards tell of different horrors of war, some never disclosed before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zh-T8YPmOE
WW2 The Luckiest Man – Channel 5
During the Second World War Alistair Urquhart was captured by the Japanese, tortured, starved and sent to work on the Death Railway in Thailand. After years in the camp he was loaded onto an airless cargo ship which was torpedoed by an American submarine. Alistair was one of the sole survivors – and drifted alone for days in the South China Sea before being picked up by a ship — a Japanese Whaling vessel. Half dead he was sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp again. Continuing his thread of bad luck, the camp was in Nagasaki where Alistair bore witness to the devastation of the world’s second atom bomb. This one hour film is the heart-wrenching, personal testimonial of 91 year old Alistair Urquhart set against the backdrop of the little known war in the Far East.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFqLnmTuhB4
BBC – The Great Betrayal, The Fall of Singapore –
A BBC documentary recounting the espionage behind the Malayan Campaign