On an otherwise ordinary day in early April this year, staff from the Water Supplies Department and HKU at the Centennial Campus construction site were preparing for a somewhat unusual event: a birthday party for someone they had never met. 

For this party was to celebrate the 70^th birthday of Mrs Muriel Blandford, who was born in the former Senior Staff Quarters, our Grade II heritage building! The Senior Staff Quarters were built in 1923-1924 for the engineer of the Elliot Pumping Station and Filters of the then Public Works Department (PWD).  Mrs Blandford’s father, Mr Arthur Glanville, was the engineer of the Station from 1933 until the Japanese occupation in 1941.

Staff from HKU, WSD, Gammon Construction (contractor) and Black and Veatch (engineering consultant) were honoured to meet this ‘new and old’ friend. Mrs Blandford has kindly donated some of her cherished photos and materials to the University. She and her family will of course always be welcome here at HKU, and hopefully she will be able to join us for the celebrations when the new campus opens in 2012. 

Arthur Paull Glanville – the former Engineer of the Elliot Pumping Station 

Trained in the UK as an engineer, Arthur Paull Glanville joined the former PWD in around 1920, after having served in the Royal Navy. He was first put in charge of Tai Tam-tuk reservoir and then the Elliot Pumping Station in 1933. Mr Glanville had three daughters, Joan, Betty and Muriel. The youngest, Muriel, was born in 1938, and left for Melbourne, Australia with her mother and sisters in July 1940, just prior to the Japanese occupation. 

Mr Glanville was detained at the Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese occupation. He was finally released under appalling conditions in 1945 and was reunited with the family in 1946 in the UK. Mr Glanville passed away in 1955, from tuberculosis.