Wall Anchor - A Unique Feature on Old Dutch Building

September 16th, 2006

The next time you visit Melaka heritage area, such as the Dutch Square and Jonker Street (Jalan Hang Jebat) of Melaka old Chinatown, don’t just look at the traditional crafted arts found on the old buildings; but instead, pay an attention to one of the most frequently ignored features unique to the old buildings built during Dutch occupation – wall anchor (also known as wall-tie).

Yes, I’m pretty sure that most of you have no idea on what a wall anchor is. The focus of this article is to introduce this architecture uniqueness.

A wall anchor is usually made with metal, and was used in olden day’s vernacular architecture to fix a brick wall to a solid timber frame of a building. The outer fixing of a wall anchor is often a simple shape of ‘I’ or ‘)(’, nautical boat anchor, numeric numbers or alphabetical letters. However, some comprehensively designed wall anchor can also be shaped as merchant’s sign or even the pre-Christian symbols like world trees. The wall anchor is known to be found in many of the former colonies of Netherlands.

Jonker Street, or Jalan Hang Jebat of Melaka, is a good place to look for wall anchors. As shown in the above photo, are a number of wall anchors spotted on a house owned by Chief Minister Incorporated (CMI) of Melaka. All the wall anchors are painted with black on the white color wall.

On the same building, a number of wall anchors shaped like nautical boat anchor and some numerical numbers were also spotted on the front side.

On some buildings, the wall anchors are not significantly notable, as the metal was painted with the wall color.

Do you know that the strawberry-coloured Christ Church constructed by Dutch also has a number of ‘I’ bar wall anchors? Check it out yourself on your next visit

Related Previous Posts

• Christ Church
• Melaka and George Town Listed as UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Sites
• Dutch Square (The Stadthuys)
• Ancient Fortress Wall Unearthed in Revolving Tower Construction Site
• The Night before Official Opening of Dataran Pahlawan Megamall

Entry Filed under: Historical Site

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