University Hall: A Castle, a Copper Spiral Staircase, and a Century of Brotherhood

A hilltop castle built by a Scottish merchant to keep watch over his own fleet, later a French missionary printing press, then an Imperial Japanese Army detention post, and finally the oldest – and smallest – male hall of residence at the University of Hong Kong. University Hall (UHall) sits at 144 Pok Fu Lam Road; it is the oldest surviving hall building at HKU, and the building itself predates the University by half a century. This article belongs to the 00–12 reference zone (factual); names are given as recorded, with no credibility badges. For the overall landscape of the college-and-hall system, see welcome.md.

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# 1. At a Glance

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# 2. Douglas Lapraik: From Watchmaker to Shipowner

The main body of University Hall is the work of a Scot who made good in the earliest days of colonial Hong Kong. According to research by the Industrial History of Hong Kong Group^※, Douglas Lapraik (1818–1869) was born in London, served an early apprenticeship as a watchmaker and maker of marine chronometers in Macau, arrived in Hong Kong in 1842, and set up his own watch business around 1846.

Lapraik's centre of gravity soon shifted from watches to shipping. He bought two wooden paddle steamers around 1850^※ and gradually opened scheduled coastal routes to Xiamen, Fuzhou and Shantou; his nephew later founded the Douglas Steamship Company in Hong Kong in 1883, running eight coastal steamers. In 1863, Lapraik joined Dent & Co. and Jardine, Matheson & Co. and others to found the Hongkong & Whampoa Dock Company, which at its peak became one of the largest shipbuilding and repair firms in Asia. According to the Industrial History of Hong Kong Group^※, he also sat on the committees of institutions including the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation from 1864, was involved with St Andrew's School affairs from 1855, and was an active Freemason – in short, a classic nineteenth-century Hong Kong "trade–shipping–property" conglomerate merchant. In other words, the man who gave University Hall its shell was no ordinary rich man: he was a key player in pushing Hong Kong from a transit entrepôt towards its role as a regional shipping hub. That lends the castle a layer of early-Hong-Kong commercial history, on top of its architectural value.

Because his fortune was tied up in his fleet, Lapraik had a practical reason for choosing a hilltop site in Pok Fu Lam for his private residence: the summit commanded a view over the entire western part of Victoria Harbour, letting him watch his own ships come and go. It also explains why the "castle" sat, unusually for its day, far from the urban centre. Lapraik returned to England in 1866, married the following year, and died in London in March 1869. According to the local history database Gwulo^※, the castle and its land (Agricultural Lot No. 31 / RBL 32) passed to his nephew John Stewart Lapraik, who ran the family business with great success for the next three decades; the property only changed hands after the nephew died, at about fifty-four. The Lapraik family's traces on Hong Kong Island go well beyond a single castle – the "Lapraik" place names in the eastern district and the centuried legacy of the Whampoa Dockyard both trace back to this watchmaker-turned-merchant.

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# 3. The Building Before the Hall (1861–1954)

# The Douglas Castle Period (1861–1894)

According to Wikipedia^※ and the HKU Heritage Fund (site archived)^※, the main body of University Hall was built by Lapraik between 1861 and 1867 as a private villa overlooking the western approaches to Hong Kong's harbour. According to the alumni association's historical account^※, the original castle was a single-storey building with an octagonal penthouse bedroom, commanding panoramic sea views, covering about 2,000 square feet (roughly 186 square metres) on a hilltop site of about 900 square metres. The two side towers and the six stone steps at the entrance that survive today were largely added later, during the French missionary period.

# The Missions Étrangères de Paris Period: Nazareth House and the Far East Press (1894–1954)

When bubonic plague struck Hong Kong in 1894, Lapraik's heirs sold the castle to the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), the French foreign missionary society. The missionaries renamed it "Nazareth House", using it as a seminary and printing establishment. According to Gwulo^※, the mission built a new wing on the north-east side of the castle, a chapel and a printing works, and extensively remodelled the original building in the early twentieth century – the two side towers and six front steps that survive today are original elements from this expansion.

The printing works – the Nazareth Press – is the most underrated piece of this pre-history. According to the alumni association's account^※, under Father Monnier the Press became one of the busiest institutions of its kind in Asia, with publications in 28 languages, covering Bibles, catechisms and dictionaries of local languages, serving the missionary network across South China and Southeast Asia. In a wider frame, MEP archival material^※ shows the Nazareth Press operated from roughly 1884 to 1954, and was the largest producer of printed works in Asian languages in the Far East from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth; the MEP's more than 4,300 missionaries produced cartographic, ethnographic and linguistic works in about 47 Asian languages, with Hong Kong as the hub of its printing network. The Press printed not only religious texts but also dictionaries and grammars compiled to help missionaries learn local dialects – in an era without the internet and with scarce type for Asian scripts, such reference works were themselves rare resources. In other words, a century ago this castle – where HKU men now play billiards and attend High Table – was a printing factory that translated the Gospel and dictionaries into dozens of Asian languages and radiated across half of East Asia. This "printing powerhouse" past resonates, a century apart on the same hillside, with HKU's own identity as a knowledge-producing institution.

The Press was no isolated operation; it was a core node in the MEP's Far Eastern printing network. Béthanie, the mission's sanatorium in nearby Pok Fu Lam, was cut from the same cloth and together they sustained the mission's printing and training system in South China. In other words, the Pok Fu Lam hillside in the late nineteenth century was one of the Catholic Church's key printing and monastic centres in the Far East. This lineage also explains why University Hall's façade carries such a strong ecclesiastical air – it was, after all, remodelled to seminary standards.

During the Second World War the Japanese occupied the building; according to Wikipedia^※, the castle was used for kempeitai (military police) purposes and as quarters for dockworkers. After 1945 the Press briefly resumed operations (the alumni association says it restarted in 1948), but after 1949 missionary work became untenable and the society began to look for a buyer. This wartime episode is recorded as objective historical fact and is not developed further here.

# Acquisition by HKU (1954)

On 4 December 1954, HKU bought the building for HK$1.6 million^※ and set about converting it into a residential hall. In the conversion, the former chapel became the dining room and the crypt became a common room – a spatial translation of "sanctuary into canteen, crypt into common room" that neatly encapsulates University Hall's layered identity.

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# 4. Life as a Hall (1956–present)

In 1956, about 52 men from Eliot Hall, Morrison Hall and Lugard Hall moved into University Hall and it was formally opened^※. The origins of this founding cohort are themselves a miniature history of HKU's residential system: Eliot Hall, Morrison Hall and Lugard Hall were all first-generation halls from the University's early years, and Morrison Hall in particular went through several phases before being rebuilt and revived in the new century (see morrison-hall.md). In other words, University Hall did not start from scratch; it "inherited" a cohort of residents and their hall memories from HKU's earliest halls. Thus University Hall became HKU's men's residential hall and has operated continuously ever since – the only one of the University's four traditional halls housed in a castle (the other three are St. John's College, Ricci Hall and the sole women's hall, Lady Ho Tung Hall).

Among all HKU halls, University Hall is known for its smallest capacity in Hong Kong (about 110) and its most historic built environment. According to the alumni association's account^※, in the first five decades alone more than 2,000 residents graduated from the hall and went on to every walk of life. Compared to modern halls that hold several hundred residents, the closeness of the University Hall community stands out. Smallness also means UHall often has to "take on many with one" in inter-hall sports leagues, debating and cultural competitions; campus observers over the years have generally judged its residents' identification with the hall and their mobilisation for competitions to be stronger than in larger halls with looser community ties.

In 1973, a staff residence called High West was completed near the castle. According to the alumni association's account^※, it has 70 units totalling about 17,000 square metres on the same slope, making up University Hall's overall footprint on the Pok Fu Lam hillside.

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# 5. Architecture: A Castle That Speaks Three Architectural Languages

According to the Antiquities and Monuments Office^※, University Hall is described as "a charming building in the Tudor, Gothic and Renaissance Revival styles" – it belongs to no single style but is a layering of successive extensions and remodellings. The most recognisable elements in the official description are the corner towers and the embattled parapets and pinnacles of the roofline, which give the whole building its castle silhouette to this day. The registered site covers about 310,000 square feet (roughly 28,800 square metres).

Inside, the castle retains much of its original architectural vocabulary. According to the Jockey Club Musicus "Heritage Stories" material^※, the hall displays arches, broad colonnaded verandas, and a chapel with a hammerbeam roof – and it was this chapel that was converted into the residents' dining hall after 1954. The chapel, crypt and printing-wing that the French mission added beyond the castle formed the skeleton of today's University Hall layout: sanctuary into dining room, crypt into common room, and the religious and residential histories of one building stack up inside the same shell.

At the heart of the building, in the south tower, sits a distinctive spiral staircase – according to Wikipedia^※, said to be one of only two of its kind in Hong Kong. Originally red and now a coppery/gold colour (known in the hall as the Golden Spiral Staircase), it is the hall's signature artefact and one of the "Three Treasures". Such heritage-grade fabric, together with HKU's other historic buildings, forms the heritage landscape of the Pok Fu Lam area (see ../05-campus/buildings-landmarks.md for the campus landmarks overview).

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# 6. The "Three Treasures" and Hall Traditions

University Hall preserves the legend of the "Three Treasures" (from alumni accounts and hall tradition):

1. The David's Deer stone beasts: standing at the castle entrance, these are, according to Wikipedia^※, a pair of stone carvings of "leogryphs" – mythical creatures thought to combine features of the elephant, qilin, lion and horse. Precisely because they resist classification into any single species, the hall also calls them the "Four Unlikes" (四不像). These stone beasts, whose origins are part of their mystery, are the hall's emblem and spiritual symbol; residents routinely take photos with them on entering and leaving the hall, and they are the core of UHall's visual identity.
2. The copper spiral staircase: in the south tower, rare in Hong Kong, regarded by residents as a treasure exclusive to University Hall.
3. "Third Sister" the cook: Yuen So-moy (袁蘇妹), who cooked in the hall for decades – see the next section.

In addition, University Hall residents are known as "Castlers", and the U Hall Spirit emphasises unity, belonging and dedication, alongside the pursuit of scholarship. The hall fields teams in inter-hall sports, drama and cultural competitions. This "small but fierce" ethos sits alongside Ricci Hall's sporting reputation and St. John's College's Round-the-Island run (RTI) tradition, forming a spectrum of distinct characters among HKU's four traditional halls.

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# 7. "Third Sister" Yuen So-moy: A Contractor's Wife, a Cook, and Half a Century of Hall Devotion

If the copper staircase and the stone beasts are UHall's "object" treasures, the third of the Three Treasures is a person – something extremely rare in Hong Kong hall traditions. The phrase that circulates around the HKU campus puts it plainly: University Hall has "Three Treasures" – the Four Unlikes, the copper staircase, and Third Sister.

From a Dongguan fishing village to the Pok Fu Lam castle. As retold in mainland Chinese media^※, Yuen So-moy (袁苏妹) was born in 1927 in a small fishing village in Dongguan, Guangdong province. She lost her mother in childhood and was raised by her carpenter father; she kept house from an early age and had almost no schooling, learning to recognise just five characters in her entire life – precisely the two names she went by: "Yuen So-moy" and "Third Sister" (三嫂). Because her husband was the third son in his family, she was called "Third Sister" after marriage. In 1957 her husband was hired as a cook in the student canteen at HKU, and as his wife, the twenty-nine-year-old Third Sister came to work at the University too.

More than forty years, working almost to seventy-three. According to the official citation for her honorary fellowship from HKU^※, Ms Yuen So-moy joined the hall in 1957 together with her husband, the hall's catering contractor (判头), and served the hall for over forty years; her official titles progressed through "Cook IV", "Assistant Cook" and "Hall Attendant", until her retirement in 1998. As retold in mainland Chinese media^※, she later moved to lighter kitchen-cleaning work after heart trouble, and kept working at HKU until she was seventy-three. The citation stresses that her contribution went far beyond her job description: she cooked special meals for sick residents, offered advice on personal and career matters, and accompanied generations of Castlers through their university years in a near-maternal role. One line from the citation is often quoted: "Education is about life-affecting-life," and "she has certainly changed the lives of many Castlers."

A citation read out in Cantonese, breaking convention. Official recognition came long before the honorary fellowship. According to the official citation^※, the hall had already elected her an Honorary Life Member in 1990; on 22 September 2009, HKU formally conferred an Honorary University Fellowship on her. As retold in mainland Chinese media^※, the ceremony broke with the University's usual practice of reading citations in English alone, delivering hers in Cantonese instead, with the then Pro-Chancellor presenting the award. Such an honour for a non-academic staff member is extremely rare, and it confirms that the "Three Treasures" legend is no mere campus urban myth but carries verifiable official endorsement.

How does a cook's wife end up in a hall for forty years? The key lies in the contractor system (判头制) long used in HKU halls. According to the official citation^※, Third Sister entered the hall precisely as the wife of the hall's catering contractor – the hall outsourced its meals to a contracting family, who lived in the hall year-round to prepare the meals, and over the years formed bonds with successive cohorts of residents that went far beyond employment. The institutional soil for Third Sister's half-century of devotion was precisely this contractor system, which remains one of the underlying mechanisms of canteen operations at HKU and across Hong Kong's universities (see ../19-canteen-food-safety/dining-system-overview.md for the overall picture). Listing "Third Sister with the ladle" among the Three Treasures is, in a sense, the residents' highest tribute to that tradition of "personalised outsourcing".

The day of the farewell. As retold in mainland Chinese media^※, Third Sister passed away on 24 November 2017. At her funeral, mourners included people of considerable standing from all walks of life – and many of them were former residents whom Third Sister had looked after in University Hall. A cook who could write only five characters was ultimately remembered in earnest by a university under the title of "Fellow" – and the story keeps being told because it reduces "hall spirit" from an abstract slogan to a single, concrete person.

# "Hall Blood" and "Daughter-in-Law Tea": A Cook Who Stitched Together Three Generations of Rituals

UHall's most distinctive intangible traditions revolve around Third Sister. According to a campus-culture account^※, the hall tradition holds that every Castler tastes the "Hall Blood" (堂血) prepared by Third Sister three times in life: once upon entering the hall as a resident, once upon graduating and leaving, and once upon marrying. The meaning attached to the "Hall Blood" changes with each life stage, symbolising the different states of mind and blessings at each juncture – Third Sister's personalised good wishes to generation after generation of Castlers.

This "meet Third Sister again at your wedding" element is not an isolated tale. The official HKU citation^※ also records that many Castlers offer her "daughter-in-law tea" (新抱茶) at their wedding banquets – treating her as an elder of the family and asking her to witness a major life event. Two accounts from independent sources corroborate each other on the "wedding – return to hall – honour Third Sister" node, giving this hall ritual more credibility than the usual hand-me-down campus folklore.

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# 8. Hall Traditions and Resident Life

The hall may hold few beds, but its traditions are dense – many of them dating back to the early years.

Inter-hall sport and the "War Cry". According to Wikipedia^※, a large share of the founding residents were international students with serious sporting ability; the hockey team was notably strong, winning the inter-hall championship several times, and helping University Hall lift the "Malayan Cup" in both 1966 and 1968. To this day residents turn out en masse to cheer their hallmates; whenever a trophy is won, the whole hall joins in the "War Cry" – one of UHall's signature surviving rituals. This inter-hall competitive and cheering culture is part of HKU's hall-sports rivalry tradition (see the athletics-and-rivalry special topic at 23-athletics-rivalry).

High Table Dinner. Like several HKU halls, University Hall holds a High Table Dinner: after a formal dinner, a Guest of Honour delivers a speech, broadening residents' horizons and putting into practice the idea that "the hall is itself an educational arena". It shares its roots with the High Table traditions at Ricci Hall and St. John's College, and is part of the common foundation of the "residence-as-whole-person-education" ideal across the HKU hall system.

Deity worship and "Global Night". The hall also keeps annual events that blend local folk custom with internationalism: a ritual of roasting a suckling pig as an offering, praying for a smooth and safe year; and "Global Night" early each academic September, when local residents host international residents for a hotpot dinner – the latter serving both orientation and cross-cultural integration, and continuing the hall's tradition, dating to its founding, of accepting international students.

That these traditions have survived in a hall of only about a hundred people is mutually reinforcing with its "small but dense" community structure: few people means every ritual demands near-total participation, which keeps the intergenerational chain of transmission exceptionally clear.

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# 9. Statutory Monument Status

According to the Antiquities and Monuments Office^※, University Hall was formally declared a statutory monument of Hong Kong on 7 September 1995 under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance – one of the few buildings on the HKU campus to hold this level of heritage protection.

This status means that any future repair or alteration work at University Hall must meet stricter heritage-conservation requirements; its Tudor/Gothic/Renaissance Revival façade, corner towers, battlements and copper spiral staircase are protected by law from arbitrary demolition or change. This is also one institutional reason why University Hall, despite having the fewest places of any hall in Hong Kong, has never been torn down and rebuilt. Statutory monuments on the HKU campus can be counted on one hand, and University Hall is one – which is why it regularly appears on heritage trail routes run by the University and the Antiquities and Monuments Office, alongside the Main Building, Hung Hing Ying Building and Tang Chi Ngong Building, forming the "walkable history of HKU". One nuance worth noting: what is protected is strictly the building's exterior – the Antiquities and Monuments Office's declaration covers "the exterior of University Hall" – leaving room for necessary internal alterations to meet modern residential needs; a common balance between heritage conservation and a building in active use. For contrast, the original site of HKU's only women's hall, Lady Ho Tung Hall, was demolished around 2000 and rebuilt in the Jockey Club Student Village – the two halls' differing fates neatly illustrate the decisive role that "statutory monument" status plays in a building's survival.

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# 10. Administration, Character and Position in the Residential System

University Hall is administered by HKU's Centre of Development and Resources for Students (CEDARS), which coordinates housing applications, while day-to-day management is led by the Hall Committee. With its dual identity as a statutory monument and the smallest hall in Hong Kong, University Hall occupies a peculiar position in HKU's residential system: it can neither keep expanding its capacity like the large modern halls and residential colleges, nor be renovated at will like an ordinary building. Its management strategy instead focuses on "sustaining a high-intensity community culture within a limited space" – which is precisely the practical soil in which informal traditions like the "Three Treasures" and "Hall Blood" have survived for decades.

Placed back in the genealogy of HKU's "four traditional halls", its distinctiveness becomes clearer:

In this table, University Hall is the only one that was "a building first, a hall second", and whose building is itself a statutory monument – its identity was not "established" but "reincarnated" from a century-old castle. Against the Jockey Club Student Village and other modern residential colleges holding several hundred or even a thousand residents, University Hall's "small but strong" operating model represents an alternative path within the HKU housing system that runs alongside the mainstream expansionist one: limited in scale, but with a community cohesion and historical depth that may exceed far larger peers. For the overall evolution, expansion and quick reference of the HKU hall system, see the hall-system overview welcome.md and the residence-and-hall-life special topic ../21-residence-college-life/residence-and-hall-life.md.

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# 11. Frequently Asked Questions

Which is older, University Hall or the University of Hong Kong? The building is older. The castle's main body was built between 1861 and 1867^※, while HKU was founded only in 1911 – the castle predates the University by half a century. HKU bought it in 1954 and converted it into a men's hall in 1956.

Why are residents called "Castlers"? Because the hall's home is a genuine castle (Douglas Castle). Residents call themselves "Castlers", and the U Hall Spirit emphasises unity, belonging and dedication.

What are the "Three Treasures" of University Hall? According to Wikipedia^※, the Three Treasures are: the pair of "Four Unlikes" stone beasts (David's Deer) at the entrance; the spiral staircase in the south tower, rare in Hong Kong; and Yuen So-moy, the long-serving hall cook honoured as "Third Sister". The first two are artefacts; the third is a person.

Who was "Third Sister", and why was she given a University Fellowship? According to the official HKU citation^※, Third Sister Yuen So-moy entered the hall in 1957 and served for more than forty years, caring for generations of residents in a near-maternal role; HKU therefore conferred an Honorary University Fellowship on her on 22 September 2009 – extremely rare for a non-academic staff member.

Is University Hall a statutory monument? Yes. According to the Antiquities and Monuments Office^※, the exterior of the building was declared a statutory monument on 7 September 1995, and subsequent repairs and alterations must comply with heritage-conservation requirements.

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# Further Reading

• HKU Hall System Overview – full picture of the HKU residential system and a quick guide to each hall
• St. John's College: HKU's Oldest Residential Unit – founded 1912, the only hall established by legislation
• Ricci Hall: Jesuit 1929, Hong Kong's Only Catholic Hall – the traditional men's hall famed for sport
• Lady Ho Tung Hall: HKU's Only Women's Hall – a comparative case with its own "Three Treasures" tradition and a demolished-then-rebuilt site
• Campus Buildings and Landmarks – HKU's historic buildings and heritage landscape around Pok Fu Lam
• HKU Canteens and the Contractor System Overview – the catering-outsourcing mechanism behind the "Third Sister" story

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