Kellie's Castle (sometimes also called Kellie's Folly) is a castle located in Batu Gajah, Kinta District, Perak, Malaysia. The unfinished, ruined mansion was built by the Scottish planter William Kellie-Smith. According to differing accounts, it was either a gift for his wife or a home for his son. Kellie's Castle is situated beside the Raya River (''Sungai Raya''), which is a small creek to the Kinta River.

Background

William Kellie-Smith (1870–1926) was born in 1870 in Kellas, Moray Firth, Scotland. In 1890, at the age of 20, he arrived in Malaya as a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

. He joined Charles Alma Baker's survey firm, who had won concessions from the state government to clear 9,000 hectares of forests in Batu Gajah, Perak. With the substantial profits made from his business venture with Baker, Kellie-Smith bought 1,000 acres (405 ha) of jungle land in the district of Kinta and started planting

rubber trees ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now ...

and dabbled in the

tin mining Tin mining began early in the Bronze Age, as bronze is a copper-tin alloy. Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with approximately 2 ppm (parts per million), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm. History Tin extraction and use ca ...

industry. In time, he named his estate "Kinta Kellas" after his home farm, "Easter Kellas". Kellie-Smith went on to own the Kinta Kellas Tin Dredging Company as well. With his fortune made, he returned to Scotland to marry, and he brought his wife, Agnes, to Malaya in 1903. They had a daughter the following year.

History

Construction on a mansion called Kellas House started in 1910. With the birth of a son in 1915, Kellie-Smith began planning for a huge castle with

Moorish The term Moor is an exonym used in European languages to designate the Muslim populations of North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly al-Andalus) during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defi ...

Indo-Saracenic Indo-Saracenic architecture (also known as Indo-Gothic, Mughal-Gothic, Neo-Mughal) was a Revivalism (architecture), revivalist architectural style mostly used by British architects in India in the later 19th century, especially in public and gov ...

, and Roman designs. Kellies Castle

He brought in 70 craftsmen from

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, and all the bricks and marble were also imported from India. The plan included a four-floored building with 14 rooms and an elevator (Malaya's first). It also showed underground tunnels, secret rooms, a tennis court, a wine cellar, and hidden stairways. In 1918, a virulent strain of

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest docum ...

struck the workmen. When they approached Kellie-Smith to build a

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

nearby, he readily agreed. In return for his generosity, they built a statue of him beside the other deities on the temple wall. It is believed that a tunnel was built to the temple from the castle. Descendants of the

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

labourers brought over to Malaya to work on the mansion still live nearby. Kellie-Smith died at the age of 56 of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

during a short trip to

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, Portugal, in 1926. His wife was devastated and decided to move back to Scotland; construction on the castle was never completed, and the structure was left abandoned in the jungle. In the end, Kellas House, later known as "Kellie's Folly", or "Kellie's Castle", was sold to the British company Harrisons and Crosfield. Nowadays, Kellie's Castle is a local tourist attraction. It was used as a setting in the 1999 film ''

Anna and the King ''Anna and the King'' is a 1999 American biographical period drama film directed by Andy Tennant. Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes loosely based their screenplay on the 1944 novel '' Anna and the King of Siam'', which gives a fictionalized a ...

'' and in 2001's ''

Skyline Cruisers A skyline is the wikt:outline, outline or shape viewed near the horizon. It can be created by a city's overall structure, or by human intervention in a rural area, rural setting, or in nature that is formed where the sky meets buildings or the ...

''. In 2015, it was the site of the first-ever

24-hour comic A 24-hour comic is a 24-page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 hours. Cartoonist Scott McCloud came up with the challenge in 1990 as a creative exercise for himself and fellow comics artist Stephen R. Bissette. Beginning in 2004, wri ...

challenge in a castle.Kellie's Castle
malaysiawelcomesyou.com

References

External links

Cameron Highlands Malaysia – Kellie's Castle
{{coord, 4, 28, 27.7, N, 101, 05, 16.1, E, type:landmark_region:MY, display=title 1910 establishments in British Malaya Buildings and structures in Perak Kinta District Unfinished castles Castles in Malaysia Houses in Malaysia Tourist attractions in Perak

Background

History

See also

References

External links