Introduction
The story behind Kellie’s Castle, the unfinished mansion outside Ipoh, is one of love and thwarted ambition. Built to celebrate the birth of a much hoped for son, its owner sadly never managed to complete it and fulfil his dream after he tragically died whilst on a journey from Malaya to England to be with his wife and son. The building stands today much as he left it when he set-off on his travels on that fateful day in 1928, never to return.
Early years
Born in 1870 in Kellas, a small village in Moray, Scotland, William Kellie Smith, known as “Kellie” from his mother’s maiden name, left Scotland at the age of twenty for Malaya to seek his fortune.
He found employment in Batu Gajah, Perak with a wealthy plantation owner from New Zealand, Charles Alma Baker, who worked as a surveyor and engineer on road construction projects.
After some years Kellie had made enough money to purchase a 1,000 acre plot of land in the Kinta District, south of Ipoh, which here cleared for a rubber plantation which he called “Kinta Kelas” after his home town in Scotland and lived there with his wife Agnes and their daughter Helen who was born in 1904. During the next decade his rubber plantation flourished and he also branched out into tin mining.
Construction of the castle
In 1915, eleven years after the birth of his first child Helen, a son Anthony was born and to celebrate the birth he decided to build a grand colonial mansion to replace the more modest home that he and his wife and daughter had been living in on his estate.
Labourers were hired from Southern India, a common source of labour at the time many of whom worked on the rubber plantations, and building materials imported. The plans envisaged the construction of a large fourteen room mansion with an imposing six storey tower with covered square, Grecian columns, a wine cellar, a lift, all decorated with Greco-Roman murals, and in the Indo-Sarcenic style similar to the colonial buildings in central Kuala Lumpur.
However, various problems delayed the construction. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 seriously disrupted the supply of building materials, as happened with many construction projects in Malaya, and work was postponed until after the war was over in 1918.
Then, in the early 1920s an outbreak of the Spanish flu occurred in the region and several of the Indian workers died. Work on the house stalled with the workers refusing to work until Kellie agreed to construct a Hindu temple on the site which was duly completed and dedicated to the Hindu deity Mariamman. The labourers were pleased and after that no worker became sick ascribing it to divine intervention, and as a token of thanks to their employer they placed an effigy of him on the roof amongst the gods, dressed in military uniform and carrying a rifle.
In 1927, twelve years after Kellie laid the corner stone the mansion was still only half completed. The manufacture of the lift was proceeding in England and he decided to travel there to check on the progress and to arrange its shipment back to Malaya. His wife and son were at the time in Scotland and he travelled with his daughter.
Death and aftermath
It was whilst on his journey back to Scotland that he tragically died whilst stopping over in Lisbon, Portugal. He had caught pneumonia and was buried in the British cemetery in the city. His wife never returned to Malaya and sold the land together with the half-finished mansion to a British company, Harrison & Crossfield, who were a leading global company in the plantation industry (today Elementis Holdings).
After the sale of the site to Harrison & Crossfield not much is known about the building except that it was apparently left to the elements in its unfinished state, and was eventually overrun by the jungle until it was rescued by the Malaysian Government who restored it to the condition that it was left by Kellie when he departed on his ill-fated trip to England in 1927.
It is now a popular tourist attraction and some say that it is haunted by the ghosts of Kellie and his wife who can be seen sometimes wandering the corridors at night.
Malaysia 1786 - 1957 