Interview with Mr S Rajamanickam recorded by Chan Kim Yin in May 2018
"I bought my house (61 Chestnut Crescent) in 1955. The owners were the Boswells, whose initial house was on the left (side of Chestnut Avenue) at that junction (with Chestnut Drive; now 84 Chestnut Ave). The Boswells later sold that house and moved over to the one of the right side (86 Chestnut Drive). When they (the Boswells) moved over here, the whole estate was theirs. There was no advertising; nobody knew there as an estate here. Of the Boswells, one brother was a lawyer, another an architect/surveyer and builder (Patrick Boswell), Mary was a teacher, another sister was a nun somewhere in Indonesia. I knew Mary Boswell because she was a teacher at Bukit Panjang School. One day [in 1954/55], we were talking and I said to her, “I am going to Serangoon Gardens to buy a house”, and she said, “Silly man – you stay at Johor Bahru and you want to buy a house all the way in Serangoon Gardens? Why not buy a house in my estate?” I didn’t believe she had an estate. Mary was a Raffles graduate. And so we walked in here, and she had a map. There was nobody here. It was all squatter settlement. As you came in, there were no roads, only laterite (i.e., red clay) tracks; and once it rains, there became big drains. People would cycle with children from the kampongs; they used to go to the Chinese school… one was Cheng Hwa where I taught for a while. [The year I met first Mary Boswell was…] 1951 – that’s when I started teaching at Bukit Panjang English School. She impressed me and I said OK, and she gave me this lot by marking it and said “That’s yours”. I gave her whatever I had – a very small downpayment of $200. Then she said, “OK, you give me in bits and pieces whenever you are able”. Pancharatnam was my friend teaching in a different school; I told him that I just went to see the house and he said “why didn’t you tell me? I just got married”. Then he came, and he liked the place and said “I am going to buy a house myself”. He was later a little angry because the downpayment he had to pay was very much larger; and even with my downpayment, the Boswells built my house first. So the first two houses on this side were mine and the one next door – the Goh’s (## Chestnut Crescent), then Pancharatnam. When I came and stood on this virgin land with all lalang, I looked from the hill (i.e., President Ishak’s house) and I saw a series of windows and the telephone in the corner: “Beautiful, vary airy, very bright”; and so I told the (Boswell) brother “that’s the house I want”. He said, “no problem, I will build it for you”. And so, for $200, they started and within 3 months, this house was up.