Bukit Brown Cemetery

The most interesting walk in central Singapore runs through a graveyard.

Bukit Brown is the best walk in central Singapore that most residents haven't done: roughly 100,000 graves under a canopy of old trees, behind a gate on Lorong Halwa, off Lornie Road. It suits history readers, birders and anyone who has done every park connector and wants something with a bit more ghost in it. The compromise is comfort: no toilets, steep and muddy sections and plenty of insects, so treat it as a light hike, go on a dry weekday morning and download the Wayfinder brochure before you leave home.

The name comes from George Henry Brown, a 19th-century British merchant who owned the hill; locals also called it Kopi Sua, or Coffee Hill. A Hokkien clan, the Seh Ong Kongsi, used part of it as a private burial ground from the 1870s, and the Municipal Commission opened it as a public Chinese cemetery on 1 January 1922. By 1929, four in ten Chinese people buried in Singapore ended up here. It closed to new burials in 1973 and then, as so much of Singapore does, it waited.

The waiting ended in 2011, when the area was earmarked for future housing and a new road was planned straight through it. The protests that followed put Bukit Brown on the 2014 World Monuments Watch, and 3,746 graves were exhumed for the eight-lane highway that now splits the site. Carry that in with you: people fought to keep this place, and its future is still not fixed.

The Bukit Brown Wayfinder, launched by the volunteers behind bukitbrown.com in October 2025, is what makes a first visit work: a self-guided trail of signed graves on Hills 1 and 3, with a downloadable brochure. Stops include a tomb dated in the Japanese Showa calendar, the grave of Koh Hoon Teck, credited with introducing bangsawan theatre, and Chew Geok Leong's pair of coloured Sikh guard statues, commissioned from Shanghai and named Home Guard and City Guard. There is a paupers' section, and the grave of rickshaw puller Low Nong Nong, whose 1938 funeral was paid for by around 3,000 fellow pullers. The finale is the Ong family complex, which the trail describes as the largest in Bukit Brown at some 600 square metres; Ong Sam Leong's own tomb gets measured against ten three-room HDB flats laid end to end, the most Singaporean unit of measurement there is.

Then there is the nature. A Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum survey recorded 233 plant species across Greater Bukit Brown, 76 of them nationally threatened, and Sunda flying lemurs live in the trees. Bring binoculars as well as a camera.

How to do it well: follow the volunteers' long-standing advice of sturdy shoes, long sleeves, insect repellent, plenty of water and a poncho, and use a toilet before you arrive, because there are none on site. Expect paved paths and some steep, muddy hill sections. Start at Hill 1 early on a dry weekday, give it two unhurried hours and finish at the Ong complex. If you would rather be led, the volunteers' walks are booked on Peatix, though they have historically been called off on hazy days.

Good to know The gate is at Lorong Halwa, off Lornie Road; buses run along Lornie and Thomson roads, and there is parking by the gates. There are no toilets on site. Download the Wayfinder brochure, and book tickets for volunteer-led walks on Peatix; walks have historically been cancelled on hazy days.

Bukit Brown Cemetery | Lorong Halwa, off Lornie Road, Singapore