BOOK FOUR
SUFFOLK HOUSE
PENANG: THE FOURTH PRESIDENCY OF INDIA, 1805–1830
INTRODUCTION
P
erhaps more than any other early building in Penang, Suffolk House represents the high expectations that were held for the island as the fourth presidency of India. Indeed it seems to have mirrored the changing fortunes of the island: planned at a time when the promise of Penang becoming the principal British naval hub on the eastern side of India was still on the agenda; rising to eminence following the end of the long wars with France; falling into disrepair with the abolition of the presidency; then returning to importance as Penang slowly clawed back its fortunes on the back of sugar and spice exports. In retrospect it is easy to consider the construction of the largest and grandest home on the island as an extravagance, an indulgence or a property venture gone wrong. But at the time it was somewhat visionary and had circumstances turned out differently William Edward Phillips’s gamble may well have paid off. Despite its mixed fortunes Suffolk House would nevertheless remain one of the island’s premier official residences for most of the nineteenth century. Why does this building have this claim to fame? Because the expectations of Penang’s importance and prosperity as a presidency failed to reach a point at which other such grandiose buildings could be justified, and no other person followed Phillips’s example. This could have been due to the sheer cost, or perhaps others were not prepared to invest so heavily in a place they may have deemed to be a temporary posting. But in reality the numbers just did not stack up. A home the size of Suffolk House was too large as a private residence for most people and an equal rent was attainable in town for a far lesser investment. Yet the underlying principle that encouraged Francis Light to construct a substantial building to represent the authority of the government remained, and this was perhaps the saving grace for Suffolk House. It was simply too grand to be ignored.
CONTESTED ORIGINS Much argument continues to this day with regard to whether Light or Phillips built Suffolk House. Light’s will referred to ‘the pepper Gardens with my Garden house plantations and all the Land by me cleared in that part of this Island called Suffolk’ which has led to the interpretation that the building referred to is Suffolk House. This building was in addition to his official residence in Light Street and Martinha’s adjoining bungalow. The term ‘garden house’ was often used to describe some of the early flat-roofed, whitewashed brick houses in colonial India. In the tenuous new settlement of George Town many of the larger houses comprised a plastered brick lower storey, a lath and plaster upper storey, and either had a flat roof or, more commonly, a pitched one sheathed with attap. From 1809 a number of substantial homes were constructed on large allotments along North Beach west of the bound ditch (now Transfer Road), including Thomas Stamford Raffles’s Runnymede. Although one or two of these were later described as being a ‘garden house’ it is difficult to determine whether or 394