Doornberg is referenced in The Architecture of an Island as a Dutch farmhouse built in 1712. In it, author Barbara Sansoni describes Doornberg as “a truly beautiful house on a lovely site at the top of Richmond Hill. Its arcade has the lovely sweep of roof and minimum four pillars of the best Ceylon Dutch houses’’.
My first visit to Sri Lanka was in 2004 and my first night was spent in Doornberg, then known as The Dutch House, where I was hosted by the effervescent Henri Tatham who, during the course of my stay, offered me a very personal glimpse into a place which would become pivotal in my life.
I came to Sri Lanka inspired by the diaries of the Australian artist Donald Friend which had recently been published by the National Library of Australia and gifted to me. Volume four of the diaries had been written at Brief, the Sri Lankan home of Beavis Bawa, the brother of the late architect Geoffrey Bawa, where Donald Friend had lived and worked for five years between 1957-1962. On my first visit to Sri Lanka and my first night at Doornberg I fell in love with the house and garden – its view to the sea, the large square rooms and deep verandahs which ran into a central courtyard and a pool hidden at the bottom of the garden. Family and friends soon followed, and it became my place to go to when life at home in Hong Kong became a little too hectic. It possesses a calm, for while the harbour and the bustling town are visible from its front verandahs, they are far enough removed to render the property a sanctuary.
Serendipity struck in early 2021 when I received word that the property may be ready for a new custodian. With border closures and travel restrictions in place due to the Covid pandemic, negotiations between Hong Kong and Colombo commenced. In May 2021, I closed my apartments in Hong Kong and Shanghai and relocated to Galle.
The house had undergone a restoration before opening its doors as a hotel, there had been minimal activity and limited upkeep over the years since the Easter bombings in Colombo in 2019 and the pandemic. It was structurally sound, but termites had infested door frames and windows, roof beams had rotted, and terracotta roof tiles broken. There was asbestos and damp.
My highest priority was to return the structure and the garden to the original state of my earlier and many visits. And so, the project began. Shortly after, the government was overthrown, plunging the country into an economic crisis with the collapse of the rupee, petrol rationing, power cuts, shortages of iron, concrete and essential materials, and a curfew. We forged ahead.
The termites were the first battle. Roofs were stripped, beams replaced, and 23,000 terracotta tiles were sourced from an old Dutch church north of Negombo. Inlaid copper pipes replaced plastic casings on the exterior walls, door frames and windows were painstakingly removed, sanded, stained and refitted. Damp was removed from the interior walls, floors were cut, wooden inlays replaced, the building was re-wired and so much more.
The property itself had suffered a major land slip three metres to the house, which in itself was a four-month process to reclaim and secure the land. By chance, I was fortunate to meet the gardener Nandasena who had planted the garden some 30 years back. We chose to be fearless, removing jungle growth, reclaiming 10 feet of lawn from the perimeter of the property – along with several resident pythons – to lay new lawn.
The large Rose Apple tree, central to the courtyard that had fallen to disease, was rescued and a programme of local planting commenced, with the exception of two Bauhinia trees – the flower of Hong Kong – which would serve as a reminder of the wonderful decades spent there. The restoration of the house and the reclaiming of the garden gave me the opportunity to appreciate the skills, ingenuity and hard work of the local tradespeople. Here restoration is prioritised over renovation – nothing is discarded, something can always be repaired and given another life.
With the absence of electricity much of the work was manual. Concrete was mixed by hand, wood sanded by hand, heavy items carried, but nothing was ever presented as too difficult. Each task was executed with a high level of exactness and pride and always with that signature Sri Lankan smile. Each afternoon, under the cool of the Banyan tree, we would gather for black tea and fresh cake from the kitchen and though language was sometimes a barrier, we would stop, sit and appreciate the progress achieved together.
The journey of restoration has exposed me to a broad spectrum of people, from discussions with UNESCO appointed historical architects to the most simple family of talented clay potters working remotely in the Western Province firing clay in wood fired kilns. Nothing is simple, every solution has become its own journey with a series of recommendations eventually leading to an answer and most often extreme euphoria.