Everton Park

Friends who'd walked this enclave many times before told me it were a nice place to visit and I should go. 

So I went. 

That is, after a hearty lunch of burger and cheese fries at Shake Shack on the Tanjong Pagar side of Neil Road. 

I'm not sure how it is but this area is possibly one of the quietest and most under-rated areas in the country. 

Not to say that it hasn't had its fair share of publicity. 

Especially since Neil Road, Tanjong Pagar, Everton Park and Cantonment Road are all within the same zone. 

It's a funny thing how I've probably passed through Everton on my way to Spottiswoode but I've never stopped here. 

So imagine my surprise when I crossed Cantonment Road and saw it like a literal housing estate with neat housing board flats, landscaped grounds, a little pavilion and free-roaming roosters running all around.  

There're two sides of this enclave that we call Everton. 

One side is the public housing estate consisting of several blocks of flats in what appears to be two distinctive designs. 

The other, of course, are the shop houses.

I went about the housing estate first. 

Because it seemed unusual. 

Not that there aren't any flats in the area (there're quite a few) but it's very seldom that one finds a housing block right opposite a structure of this design that once used to be the front compound of a Methodist school. 

One thing unusual about these blocks that I noticed was the height of their void decks. 

I'm not sure when these blocks were built- they look like they were built during the 80s- but the ceilings of their void decks seemed to be much lower than those of other blocks built around the same time. 

Perhaps they might have been higher at some point in time, but they were definitely low now. 

I can't recall whether it were the same for the other floors. 

It so happened that I got a bit too distracted by the view. 

However, I did notice that the two blocks were interconnected- on the upper floors- and I thought that very unusual. 

Where downstairs it was just like a normal walkway space, upstairs it became a very wide, and very spacious landing. 

I wish I'd taken a picture. 

But I hadn't come here to feature the blocks, and anyway I was eager to take a look at the sprawling view.

From this spot near the lift, there was, of course, Pinnacle @ Duxton on the left, then Cantonment Primary School in front, and Marine House- the red and white colored 70s style building somewhere in between. 

From the corridor on the other block past the large lift landing I managed to see some of the other blocks in front and, to my right, the port, with the hills of (Pulau Brani?) flanking behind. 

The charm of Everton however lies not merely in the public housing blocks (even though they do have nice, airy corridors and interesting ground-level shops) but in the beautifully restored shop house homes that like opposite a stretch of Everton Road. 

It was lovely, I tell you, to walk past these beautiful, quiet homes. 

Once or twice I went into the five foot way.

But- fascinated by the architecture that I was- I stayed on the road most of the time. 

It's very hard to describe just how it felt to be there. 

And the only way I can say it is like this: If the flats were a picture of the present and the future, these homes were living presence of a time past. 

It didn't feel like I was here in present day Singapore with SGH on the opposite side and the buses all trundling down crowded Neil Road. 

It felt like I was elsewhere, another place, another time. 

It's not every place that manages to retain its quiet, rustic, slower-paced charm. 

But the residents of Everton Park have done it. 

And they've done it well. 

Coming here made me feel like very little of times past had changed. 

I found myself wondering who it were that used to live behind these doors, and did they still live there? 

Were there children who once played along this alley during the evening time? 

Were there families who gathered around the table in the foyer of the family home having their dinner? 

What about the cars that might have once lined these streets?

What did their owners do? 

Maybe it might be exaggerating if I said that I felt time stood still, but I could almost (see) someone from a different time and different era stepping out of a car from a different decade, at where I stood, in the late afternoon of 2022 Singapore. 

Nothing has disturbed the serenity of the space. 

Nothing has shifted the dynamics of the quiet street in the way that other spaces have.

The energies of the place have been beautifully preserved. 

And I somehow felt very much at peace.

Perhaps the presence of nature has something to do with. 

Perhaps the space, and beauty of Spottiswoode Park just behind Everton contributed something to do with it. 

I don't know. 

But- whilst being fascinated by a dog happily running over the grass off leash- I was completely awed by the sight of the evening sun throwing her golden rays over the wide slopes and the park's (naturally growing) trees.