Murray Building was in Central before it was demolished and reconstructed in Stanley (below).

Major Edward Aldrich of the Royal Engineers arrived in Hong Kong in 1843, a year after the Opium War. His first job was to build barracks for the eight regiments of British and Indian troops stationed in the colony. A contemporary of his described how the soldiers were living in “a few wretched huts, built on shelves cut on the acclivity of a ridge at West Point [that] were called barracks, but were really pest-houses.”

Like many Victorian military engineers, Aldrich was a frustrated architect with a love for classical Greek architecture. He was supported enthusiastically by Major-General D’Aguilar, who as well as being the commander of the British Forces was also the Lieutenant Governor of the new British colony.

The barracks that Aldrich built were named after Sir George Murray, the Duke of Wellington’s Quarter Master General. Aldrich’s ambitious plan was to design a barracks that in his own words would “rival the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis”. No expense seemed to have been spared. All the building material for the barracks came from Manila including 462 granite Doric and Ionic columns. The plans were approved by the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Stanley. The nearest Aldrich got to building the Temple of the Sun was Murray House on Garden Road in Central, the officers' mess at Murray Barracks.

Strangely, this building has survived. After the Hong Kong government acquired Murray House from the army in 1961, it was used as offices for the Rating and Valuation Department. It was not a popular place to work. This was because the building was haunted. Only after the government had decided to demolish it in 1982 were the ghosts exorcised by Buddhist monks. The ceremony must have worked, because no Japanese kempei have been spotted goose-stepping around the foyer of I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower, which was built on the site.

After Murray House was demolished in 1982, every stone was carefully numbered so that it could be reconstructed at a later date somewhere else. Nobody believed that this would actually happen. However, eighteen years later, to everybody’s surprise, it was rebuilt in Stanley Village, which was named after Lord Stanley, who had originally approved the building in the first place. As well as being British Prime Minister three times, he was also an accomplished scholar who translated Homer’s Illiad into English. This may have been the reason he was asked to become King of Greece, an honour that he graciously declined.

Today Murray House contains the Hong Kong Maritime Museum which is funded by Hong Kong’s international shipping community and is one of the most interesting museums in the territory. Another fascinating place to visit is the Museum of Tea Ware in Hong Kong Park. This building was also designed by Major Aldrich, although some historians attribute it to his junior, Lieutenant Thomas B. Collinson, who had actually left the colony before the general moved into Headquarters House. It was later called Flagstaff House. The core of the collection of tea ware and seals was presented to the Museum of Art by a generous local collector, K.S. Lo, in the 1970s.

Headquarters House, later called Flagstaff House, was residence of the British Army Commander until 1984.