George Drumgoole Coleman

George Drumgoole Coleman (1795 – 1844), also known as George Drumgold Coleman, was an Irish civil architect who played an instrumental role in the design and construction of much of the civil infrastructure in early Singapore, after it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819.

Born in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, he was the son of James Coleman, a merchant, part of whose business was dealing in building materials. Coleman was trained as a civil architect.

In 1815, at the age of 19 years, he left Ireland for Calcutta, India, where he set up as an architect designing private houses for the merchants of Fort William. In 1819, he was invited, through his patron John Palmer, to build two churches in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. The churches were never built, but Coleman spent two years working in Java.

Coleman then obtained an introduction to Sir Stamford Raffles from Palmer in Calcutta, and travelled to Singapore, arriving in June 1822. Coleman was responsible, as advisor to Raffles, for the draft layout of Singapore in 1822. He planned the centre of the town, created roads, and constructed many fine buildings. Raffles was away in Sumatra at the time, but Coleman also set about designing for him a residency house of timber with a thatched roof. On his return, Raffles approved the house, construction of which was begun in November of the same year, and he commissioned Coleman to design a garrison church. However, the church was not built, and in June 1823 Coleman left for Java where he spent he next two and a half years, returning to Singapore in 1825.

On his return to Singapore in 1825, he designed a large Palladian house for David Skene Napier, and a palatial building for the merchant John Argyle Maxwell, which before completion was leased to the government for use as a court house and government offices. Much altered and enlarged, it eventually formed part of the Parliament House of the Republic of Singapore. It was again in the Palladian manner, adapted to the tropical climate by incorporating a veranda and overhanging eaves to provide shade.

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