San Fat Estate () was the first

public housing estate Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

Tuen Mun Tuen Mun or Castle Peak is an area near the mouth of Tuen Mun River and Castle Peak Bay in the New Territories, Hong Kong. It was one of the earliest settlements in what is now Hong Kong and can be dated to the Neolithic period. In the more re ...

New Territories The New Territories is one of the three main regions of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. It makes up 86.2% of Hong Kong's territory, and contains around half of the population of Hong Kong. Historically, it ...

, Hong Kong, located on

reclaimed land Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lak ...

near the

Tuen Mun River The Tuen Mun River is a river in Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong. It has many tributaries, with major ones coming from Lam Tei, Kau Keng Shan, Hung Shui Hang and Nai Wai. It flows south, bisecting Tuen Mun New Town. It eventually feeds int ...

, at the junction of Pui To Road and Tuen Mun Heung Sze Wui Road. It consisted of four residential blocks completed in 1971, offering 2,131 flats with more than 6,000 residents. It was the smallest rental estate in Tuen Mun.

History

Tuen Mun New Town project was then known as Castle Peak New Town and thus the estate was originally named Castle Peak Estate (). After the

Hong Kong Government The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government, refers to the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong Special administrative regions of China, ...

renamed Castle Peak to Tuen Mun in 1974, the estate was renamed San Fat Estate in honour of

Chan Yat-sen Chan Yat-san, MBE, JP (; 21 August 1919 – 27 July 2007) was a prominent Hong Kong politician and rural leader. He was a New Territories indigenous inhabitant and Chairman of the powerful Heung Yee Kuk, and was dubbed the "King of the New Ter ...

and

Lau Wong-fat Lau Wong-fat, GBM, GBS, OBE, JP (; 15 October 1936 – 23 July 2017) was a Hong Kong businessman and politician. He had been the long-time chairman of the Rural Council, the most powerful organ representing the interests of the New Territ ...

, prominent figures in

Heung Yee Kuk The Heung Yee Kuk, officially the Heung Yee Kuk N.T., is a statutory advisory body representing establishment interests in the New Territories, Hong Kong. The council is a powerful organisation comprising heads of rural committees which repres ...

. The estate was home to the Hoh Fuk Tong Primary School, which later relocated to Lung Mun Oasis. It also had a 5-a-side football pitch, shops, a bank, and a garden. The estate was listed in the Comprehensive Redevelopment Programme in 1988 that planned for the redevelopment of the Housing Authority's older estates. The 1996 "Five-Year Redevelopment Programme" announced that the estate would be demolished in 2000-01 due to its age, and to free up land for the construction of the

Tuen Mun station Tuen Mun is an MTR station in Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong. It is the western terminus of the . The station is elevated over the Tuen Mun River, near the Town Park in the centre of Tuen Mun New Town. The first train to Wu Kai Sha dep ...

of the

West Rail The West Rail line () was a rapid transit line that formed part of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system in Hong Kong until 27 June 2021. Coloured magenta on the MTR map, the line ran from Tuen Mun to Hung Hom, with a total length of , i ...

. About 7,000 residents in total had to be relocated for the construction of the West Rail, and most of these were in San Fat Estate. Residents of the estate submitted a 500-name petition against the proposed railway alignment. The estate was demolished between November 2001 and January 2002. A light rail station, called San Fat stop, opened in 1988. It was rebuilt above ground level to integrate it with the new West Rail station and renamed

Tuen Mun stop Tuen Mun () is an MTR Light Rail stop which belongs to zone 2. There are two platforms in Tuen Mun stop. This Light Rail stop is located above Pui To Road and Ho Pong Street and north of Tuen Mun Park. It provides service for nearby resid ...

in 2003. The MTR station is actually built on a viaduct over the

nullah A nullah or nala ( Hindustani or "nallah" in Punjabi) is an 'arm of the sea', stream, or watercourse, a steep narrow valley. Like the wadi of the Arabs, the nullah is characteristic of mountainous or hilly country where there is little rainfall ...

, and not on the former site of San Fat Estate. Following completion of the station, the former site of the estate was used as a temporary parking lot, and as a public transport interchange. The site was then developed jointly by

KCR Corporation The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC; ) is a Hong Kong wholly government-owned railway and land asset manager. It was established in 1982 under the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation Ordinance for the purposes of operating the Kowloon– ...

and

Sun Hung Kai Properties Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited (SHKP; ) is a listed corporation and the largest property developer in Hong Kong as of 2019. The company is controlled by the Kwok family trust, largely the Kwok brothers. The Kwok family trust was set up by Kw ...

as a shopping centre called "V City" (opened 2012–13) and a private residential estate above called "Century Gateway", comprising seven blocks and 1,990 flats.

Houses

References

{{coord, 22.3948, 113.97312, display=title Residential buildings completed in 1971 2002 disestablishments in Hong Kong Former public housing estates in Hong Kong Tuen Mun