Kellie's Castle
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Kellie's Castle (also Kellie's Folly ) is a castle in Batu Gajah , Kinta District , Perak in Malaysia on the Raya River (Sungai Raya), a small stream on the Kinta River .
The unfinished ruined mansion was built by a Scottish planter named William Kellie-Smith. It is reportedly either a gift for his wife or a home for his son.
background
William Kellie Smith (1870-1926) [1] was born in Kellas, Moray Firth, Scotland in 1870 and came to Malaya in 1890 as a civil engineer. He joined Charles Alma Baker's surveying firm, who had the state government cleared 9,000 acres of forest in Batu Gajah, Perak. Using the sizeable profits made from his relationship with Baker, Smith bought 1,000 acres of jungle land in the Kinta district, began planting rubber trees and tried his hand at tin mining.
He later named his estate “Kinta Kellas” after his local farm “Easter Kellas”. Smith also owned the Kinta Kellas Tin Dredging Company. After his fortune was made, he returned home to marry his Scottish lover Agnes and took her to Malaya in 1903. They had a daughter named Helen the following year.
In 1909 Smith built his first villa "Kellas House", which was even mentioned on September 15, 1911 in the London Financier newspaper.
