Digital Twin
Brief
Command House is located at 17 Kheam Hock Road.1 Built circa 1937 to 1938, it was originally known as Flagstaff House. Prior to the British withdrawal from Singapore in 1971, the building was the official residence of the British General Officer Commanding (GOC) of Malaya and other military officials, including Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten.2 The house later served as the residence of the Singapore Speaker of Parliament and one of Singapore’s presidents.3 In 2007, it became a campus for business education and was gazetted as a national monument in 2009.4
British colonial period
After World War I, the British War Office leased a colonial house at Mount Rosie (a large country estate located at what is now Mount Rosie Road and Chancery Lane), which became the residence of the GOC of Malaya.5 In 1925, the GOC’s residence came to be known as Flagstaff House, Mount Rosie, so as to differentiate it from other residences that had been established in the neighbourhood.6
In March 1937, it was announced that a new Flagstaff House costing 100,000 Straits dollars would be built to house the GOC.7 A site of 11.5 acres on the west side of Kheam Hock Road was selected for the new building, which was built circa 1937 to 1938.8
The first major event at the new Flagstaff House took place on 7 September 1938. It was the wedding reception of then GOC Major-General W. G. S. Dobbie’s son, who was then a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. Regarded as the biggest military wedding in Singapore at the time, the reception was attended by 400 guests, including then Governor Shenton Thomas (Sir).9 Subsequently, Dobbie moved into the new Flagstaff House in October 1938.10
World War II
Dobbie’s successor as GOC was Major-General Lionel Bond, who was in turn replaced by Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival in May 1941.11 Percival arrived in Singapore without his wife and children, who had remained in Britain. He thus shared the Flagstaff House with Air Officer Commanding, Air Vice-Marshal C. W. H. Pulford, who had arrived in Singapore shortly before him and was also unaccompanied by family.12






