Freetown's Hill Station Kit Houses

Architecture, tropical medicine and the unequal landscape of colonial Freetown

As Krio people, we preserve Freetown's history most honestly when we tell the full story: these striking houses are architectural landmarks, but they also record colonial segregation.

A purpose-built colonial enclave

Between 1902 and 1904, the British colonial administration developed Hill Station on an escarpment above Freetown. The settlement was reserved for European officials and staff. Its location reflected contemporary medical thinking after research connected mosquitoes with malaria, but it also created a racially separated residential enclave above the city.

The surviving houses are not the same tradition as Freetown's Krio board houses. Krio board houses — often called old bod ose — grew from the building practices of Freetown's settler communities. Hill Station's bungalows were imported British prefabricated structures created for colonial personnel.

How the houses were built

The Hill Station bungalows arrived from Britain as kits to be assembled and clad in Sierra Leone. Their raised living floors, deep verandas, generous roof overhangs and bands of openings helped catch breezes and shade the rooms. Concrete bases and structural frames lifted the accommodation above the ground and took advantage of views across the forest, city and sea.

A dedicated narrow-gauge mountain railway linked Hill Station with central Freetown from 1904 to 1929. Its timetable served the commute of colonial officials, making the enclave an expensive public project for a small and privileged population.

The "Harrods house" name

Many Sierra Leoneans and travel accounts refer to the Hill Station bungalows as "Harrods houses" and say they were ordered through the London department store. The sources reviewed for this article verify that the buildings were prefabricated in Britain and shipped as kits. They do not, however, provide firm archival proof that Harrods supplied them. For that reason, the popular name should be presented as an attribution rather than an established fact.

Why these buildings matter to us

Today, the remaining bungalows are valuable evidence of how architecture, medical science and empire shaped Freetown. Their design is ingenious, but their original purpose was unequal. Preserving them should therefore mean more than admiring their appearance; it should also mean explaining who built them, who was allowed to live there and how colonial planning divided the city.

Placed beside our Krio board-house heritage, the Hill Station houses reveal two distinct histories of timber architecture in Freetown. One is rooted in the lives and adaptations of resettled African communities. The other records a colonial administration that sought distance from the African city below. Together, they help us read Freetown's built environment with greater care.

Sources and further reading

This article was checked against the following sources. Links were accessed in July 2026.

Royal Institute of British Architects — Hill Station: architecture and the altitudes of Empire — https://www.riba.org/news/hill-station-architecture-and-the-altitudes-of-empire/

Transnational Architecture Group — Hill Station: Colonial Period Housing in Freetown — https://transnationalarchitecture.group/2023/01/11/hill-station-colonial-period-housing-in-freetown-sierra-leone/

Sierra Leone National Museum — Board Houses: Sierra Leone's Unique Architecture — https://artsandculture.google.com/story/board-houses-sierra-leone-39-s-unique-architecture-sierra-leone-national-museum/FwWxAIjU4XfmMA?hl=en

Reuters — Freetown's wood homes a link to Sierra Leone's past — https://www.reuters.com/article/world/africa/freetowns-wood-homes-a-link-to-sierra-leones-past-idUSBRE8420IP/