Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village

Lyemun Barracks was named after the fishing village of Lei Yue Mun. The old Lyemun Barracks was one of the earliest and most important British Army fortifications in Hong Kong. Situated at the northeast corner of Hong Kong Island overlooking the eastern approach to the Victoria Harbour, Lei Yue Mun occupied a strategic position. In 1885, the military decided to build a permanent infrastructure at Lei Yue Mun and later in 1889, the land was transferred to the War Department for the construction. The Barracks consisted mainly of three portions:

The central area: Main Barracks (Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village)

The western ridge: Upper Fort (Sai Wan Fort)

The headland: (Lei Yue Mun Fort, now the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence, Pak Sha Wan Battery.

The fortifications of Lei Yue Mun had already become an important point of coastal defense during the 1890s and continued to expand in the following decades. By the 1930s, however, the strategic importance of Lei Yue Mun had declined considerably as a result of technological and tactical advances.

On 19 December 1941, the Barracks fell into the hands of the Japanese. At 3:00 am, a troop of Japanese soldiers, in a car, broke through the fence, using bombs and killed the British Guards. The rest of the soldiers, around 100 British soldiers, were locked in a cannon loading room, until 9:30 pm, the Japanese ordered the soldiers to get out, and shot all of the soldiers, two Chinese-British soldiers survived by hiding under the corpses, escaping successfully.

The Barracks housed the Depot and Record Office of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps between 1948 and 1986. The Barracks were handed over to the Government in 1987 and were subsequently converted into the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village.[1]

After the Lyemun Barracks were left disabled and were handed over to the Government, the Southern Part was converted into the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village, while the headland was left unused and lost until it was converted into the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence in 2000 (Does not include the Pak Sha Wan Battery and nearby structures).

The whole former barracks compound is graded as Grade I historic building because of its historic significance. The buildings of the compound are graded as Grade I and II historic buildings separately, however.[2]

During the outbreak of the Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, a larger cluster of cases in Hong Kong were focused on the Amoy Gardens housing estate, particularly in Block E. Its spread was later suspected to have been facilitated by defects in its drainage system, and it was subsequently discovered that fecal-oral transmission of SARS was possible. By March, the total number of infected people have reached over 200, 137 of those residing in Block E. By the end of the month, the government issued an order to transfer the remaining unaffected residents of Block E into isolation in the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village and the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung. The residents were subsequently returned to their homes after Hong Kong was removed from the World Health Organization (WHO)'s list of 'Affected Areas' in late-June 2003.

In January 2020, SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China, and began spreading across the globe. By January 22, 2 confirmed cases of COVID-19 emerged in the SAR and the government set up two quarantine locations, the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village and the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village.[3] 5 citizens who came in close contact with the 2 victims of the coronavirus were put into isolation at one of the two quarantine camps.

The holiday village include a total of 4 family hostels and 2 group hostels, all provided with balconies, bedrooms, and lavatories with showering facilities, accommodating the living of up to 282 people. It has transformed into a park/holiday village, with facilities such as rope courses, a horse-riding school (with a very steep hiking/hacking route up the nearby hillsides), tennis courts, basketball courts, football pitches, as well as other facilities for numerous indoor and outdoor entertainment. The barracks once housed by soldiers have now been transformed into small living quarters for the holiday village. Each block has a different purpose, providing different facilities for campers to enjoy, the most well-known being Block 10, the main Recreational Center, and Block 7, the Coffee Corner.

Built in 1939, Block 3 was proposed by the government to be converted into a quarantine facility in May 2016.

As the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village was constructed in the early 20th century, the buildings inside the Holiday Camp were modelled on the European-style buildings at the time of their construction. The buildings share a similar color scheme, with white as their primary color and light blue as their secondary color, usually found on window frames. The buildings were located across hillsides, with passageways linking them. The buildings of the previously known Lyemun Barracks were converted into Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village, with a number of exceptions. One example of this would be Block 8, an outhouse located behind the Coffee Corner, with the area listed as out of bounds and prohibited to enter, although tourists could follow a pathway behind Block 10 to reach it. Block 3, located diagonally from the Canteen (Block 4), was previously left unused and deactivated. Its surrounding area was sealed off, though tourists could risk climbing a nearby stone slope, and over the iron wire mesh to enter it. In May 2016, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department proposed converting the then deactivated Block 3 into a quarantine facility, with the function to prevent epidemics from spreading in case of an outbreak. The conversion would be scheduled to undergo in late-2017 to 2019. However, even with the building re-painted, it is still unclear whether the proposed plan went through as the facility was never opened to the public. As a result, its current status remains a mystery.

Buildings in the holiday village have numbers printed on their exterior walls for visitors to identify, some with its year of establishment, a distinctive feature kept from its days as part of the Lyemun Barracks. Some buildings however, have re-printed them with a different font, or have even stripped off these numbers and have replaced them with signs.

The layout of the Officers' Barracks (Block 7) during its days as part of the Royal Artillery Barracks, notice the difference in structure.

Layout of the Royal Artillery Barracks. Notice the missing Block 9, which in today is located across Block 10.

In between January and July 2018, Block 7, the 'Coffee Corner', underwent renovation procedures to improve the building's interior. After the refurbrishment, the Coffee Corner was reopened in August 2018 and introduced itself as more aesthetically appealing. The floor was replaced from plastic texture sheets to polished wood tiles, parts of walls and pillars fitted with dark marble coatings, and improved lighting. This renovation also introduced drawings hung on walls, representing the layout of buildings of the Royal Artillery Barracks. This includes the Soldiers' Barracks (Block 10), Officers' Barracks (Block 7), Outhouses (Block 8, Block 11, Block 12, Block 13), Married Quarters (Block 14, Demolished) and the Guard House (Block 15, Demolished). These drawings illustrate each building's exterior and interior structure in their days as part of the Lyemun Barracks.

Based on these illustrations, it can be concluded that during the process of conversion into the Holiday Village, the structures had to be altered to be catered to the building's new purposes. For example, the Officers' Quarters' original structure consisted of individual rooms, a big contrast to the current design of the Coffee Corner, being one large living room with several smaller rooms on the sides. Another drawing depicts the locations of these buildings on a hand-drawn map, suggesting that Block 10 was originally built to be shorter in length, but was extended subsequent to the demolition of the Married Quarters, which occupied said space. Furthermore, Block 9 was not present in the illustrations, which could suggest that either Block 9 was not built at the time of the residential period of the Royal Artillery Army, or that Block 9 was present but was not part of the Artillery barracks to be included in the drawings.

Remains of a hot tub in a swimming pool beside Block 1

Block 44, 'Sniper Room'. Notice the poor conditioning of the interior.

Situated on a small hillside beside the Eastern Corridor, the green and white structure uses a different color scheme than other buildings, and was formerly used as a Changing Room for soldiers before pool training. Block 1's structure remains intact, though in poor condition, with glass pieces and layers of dried up paint scattered across the rooms, with broken doors and showering facilities gone rusty. Several signs pasted on the walls and pillars have also deterioated and not legible, with both the main swimming pool, and two other hot tubs blocked off with concrete.

Other structures within the isolated area share the same poor condition, with Block 44 being another example. Named the 'Sniper Room', the block resembles a sniper ranch with a round window near the roof of the front wall. The white structure remains intact with significant evidence of deteriotation, with chipped paint on walls peeled off and broken floor tiles. The impaired condition shared by these isolated and deactivated buildings is a drastic comparison to the buildings converted into parts of the holiday village, in addition to its proof of the barracks' lengthy history.