What Was Sengkang Before Sengkang? | Kangkar, Fish Auctions, Plantations and the Rivers Before the New Town

SINGAPORE / ESTATE HISTORY / SENGKANG

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By The Memory desk · Historical reference · Sources checked 7 October 2026

Before the new town, the land that became Sengkang was a stretch of rivers, plantations and kampongs in north-eastern Singapore, and its best-known settlement was Kangkar, a fishing village at the end of Upper Serangoon Road. For about six decades Kangkar ran a wholesale fish market where boats unloaded before dawn and merchants auctioned the catch in Teochew. Sengkang history as a town begins only after that market moved to a new fishing port at Punggol in 1984 and the last villagers were resettled by 1986.

HDB started planning the new town in 1994, the first flats at Rivervale were finished in 1997, and in 2003 the Sengkang LRT and the North East Line opened within five months of each other. The planners chose a seafaring theme, so many of the old village and road names survive on the LRT map. This history covers the land and settlement story; the shopping centre has its own history in our piece on Compass Point and Compass One.

Sengkang at a glance

Location	North-eastern Singapore, between Sungei Punggol and Sungei Serangoon
Old name	Kangkar, Teochew for “foot of the port”
Name origin	Lorong Sengkang, a lane off Lorong Buangkok; the word’s original meaning is uncertain
Before the town	Rubber, pepper and pineapple plantations, kampongs and the Kangkar fishing village and wholesale fish market
New town	Planning from 1994; first flats at Rivervale in 1997; LRT from January 2003 and MRT from June 2003
Today	An HDB town of about 267,600 residents (2025), with seven subzones

Why is it called Sengkang?

The town took its name from Lorong Sengkang, a small road off Lorong Buangkok. Where that road name came from is not settled. The National Library’s Infopedia gives the Chinese reading 盛港, “prosperous harbour”, which suits a place known for its fishing port, but a 2026 BiblioAsia article by Darren Seow of the National Library notes that the word could be either Chinese or Malay in origin.

The older name is easier to explain. Kangkar is Teochew for “foot of the port” (港脚), and it described the village and landing on Sungei Serangoon where fishing boats tied up. For most of the twentieth century, people who lived in this part of the north-east would have given their address as Kangkar, or as a milestone on Upper Serangoon Road, rather than as Sengkang.

Rivers and plantations before the town

The record of the land before the fish market is thin. Infopedia notes that rubber, pepper and pineapple plantations once flourished in the area, and BiblioAsia adds that the two rivers were used to carry harvests from those plantations. Neither source gives dates for when the estates were opened or abandoned, and we have not found one that does.

What is clear is that the rivers organised the place. Sungei Punggol runs along one side of today’s town and Sungei Serangoon along the other, and the fish market stood where the canalised Sungei Pinang branches off the Serangoon River. Upper Serangoon Road ended there. That made Kangkar a meeting point of road and water, and it explains why a village at the edge of the island became a supplier of fish for much of it. The neighbouring Teochew settlement along the same road, Aukang, is covered in our history of what Hougang was before Hougang.

Kangkar fish market: four in the morning at the end of Upper Serangoon Road

By the early 1980s Kangkar was the base for about 90 offshore fishing boats and 16 fish merchants, and roughly 40 tonnes of fish passed through it each day, according to BiblioAsia. The market itself was rough: attap huts and a pitted concrete pier, with buyers parking their trucks and cars wherever they could. The old market site is now covered by the Boathouse Residences and Heron Bay condominiums.

A Straits Times report from 1983, quoted by BiblioAsia, puts the boats coming in at about four in the morning, with merchants arriving half an hour later to buy fish, prawns, crabs, squid and shellfish. The auction was loose and fast. Sellers called out prices and moved them up or down with demand, Teochew was the working language, and the merchants took a commission of six to eight per cent before paying the fishermen. From Kangkar the catch went on to the island’s wet markets and morning fishmongers.

1983 to 1986: the market moves and the village empties

In the early 1980s the area was set aside for redevelopment, and the government built a replacement. The Punggol Fishing Port and Wholesale Fish Market cost $11.7 million and offered what Kangkar never had: water taps, stalls selling crushed ice and proper parking. BiblioAsia dates the Kangkar market’s closure to April 1984, after about six decades of trading; the National Heritage Board’s Hougang heritage trail gives 1983 for the move. Either way, the merchants went to Punggol, a story told in our history of what Punggol was before Punggol.

By 1986 the remaining few hundred villagers had been resettled. Some kept coming back. One former resident, Loh Kiam Chung, told a reporter that an old house was now “our clubhouse”, where friends still met for breakfast and cooked as before, and older women returned to buy fish from mobile hawkers because they did not trust the freshness elsewhere. Meanwhile the cleared land was not empty for long: through the 1980s, people staked out parcels without permission and leased them to motor workshops and small furniture makers, BiblioAsia records.

1994 to 2003: building the “Town of the Seafarer”

In 1994 HDB put a ten-member team under senior architect Cheong Kin Man to plan the new town. They gave it the theme “Town of the Seafarer”. Housing blocks were raised on three-storey columns meant to recall the stilts of fishing villages, a sculpture park was filled with fishermen, boats and sea creatures, and the precincts were named Compassvale, Anchorvale and Rivervale. The town was divided into seven subzones, planned for about 95,000 flats in total.

Building was fast. The first flats at Rivervale were completed in 1997, nearly 6,000 flats went up within about a year, and the bus interchange opened on 12 June 1998. Roads lagged behind. For a time Punggol Road was the only way out, and one resident complained to The Straits Times that at peak hour the queue stretched from one end of Punggol Road to the Tampines Expressway. By 2003 there were four main routes out of the estate and two flyovers to the expressway, and the town held about 115,000 residents in more than 36,000 flats.

Rail arrived the same year. The Sengkang LRT, now a 10.7-kilometre automated network of 14 stations, began service on 18 January 2003, and Sengkang station on the North East Line followed on 20 June 2003. Sengkang was built as an LRT town from the start rather than having rail added later, which Infopedia counts as a first for Singapore.

What do the LRT station names remember?

Several stations carry the vanished landscape. Kangkar station keeps the name of the old fishing village and market. Cheng Lim and Renjong are named after Cheng Lim Farmway and Lorong Renjong, two rural roads that disappeared under the new town. Kupang is a kind of clam. Rumbia comes from the sago palm that once grew in the swamps, and Bakau is the mangrove tree.

This is our reading rather than a documented aim, but the names do something the old village could not: they put the wet, coastal vocabulary of the north-east into daily use for a quarter of a million people who mostly never saw it. The new town’s shopping and LRT story continues in our histories of Compass One at the town centre and The Seletar Mall in Fernvale.

Sengkang today

As of October 2026, the river edges are the best place to read the old landscape. Sengkang Riverside Park, a 21-hectare park along Sungei Punggol, opened in 2008, and the Sengkang Floating Wetland on Punggol Reservoir was completed in 2010. The rivers themselves stopped being tidal when the Punggol–Serangoon Reservoir Scheme was completed in 2011. The 26-kilometre North Eastern Riverine Loop links both banks; our guide to the park connector network explains how the routes join up.

Sengkang General Hospital opened on 18 August 2018, and the town had about 267,600 residents in 2025. The next phase is Fernvale North, an 18.9-hectare site planned for about 10,000 homes, according to BiblioAsia. Nothing of Kangkar village survives above ground, so the station sign and the riverside are the closest a visitor can get.

A Sengkang history timeline

• Early twentieth century: Rubber, pepper and pineapple plantations in the area; dates not documented.
• Around the 1920s: The Kangkar wholesale fish market begins trading; the date is inferred from its “six decades” of operation to 1984.
• 1983: A Straits Times report describes the pre-dawn Teochew fish auction at Kangkar.
• 1983 or April 1984: The market moves to the new Punggol Fishing Port (sources differ on the year).
• 1986: The last few hundred Kangkar villagers are resettled.
• 1994: HDB’s planning team adopts the “Town of the Seafarer” theme.
• 1997: The first flats at Rivervale are completed.
• 12 June 1998: Sengkang Bus Interchange opens.
• August 2002: Compass Point shopping centre opens.
• 18 January 2003: The Sengkang LRT begins service.
• 20 June 2003: Sengkang station opens on the North East Line.
• 2008: Sengkang Riverside Park opens.
• 2011: The Punggol–Serangoon Reservoir Scheme is completed.
• 18 August 2018: Sengkang General Hospital opens.

Questions people ask

What does Sengkang mean?

The town is named after Lorong Sengkang, a former lane off Lorong Buangkok. In Chinese it is written 盛港, “prosperous harbour”, but the original source of the road name, Chinese or Malay, is uncertain.

What was Kangkar?

A fishing village and wholesale fish market at the end of Upper Serangoon Road, on Sungei Serangoon. Its name is Teochew for “foot of the port”. The market closed in the early 1980s and moved to Punggol.

When was Sengkang new town built?

HDB began planning in 1994 and the first flats, at Rivervale, were completed in 1997. The LRT opened in January 2003 and the MRT station in June 2003.

Why do Sengkang places have nautical names?

The town was planned around a “Town of the Seafarer” theme to recall the Kangkar fishing village, hence Compassvale, Anchorvale and Rivervale.

Where was the old Kangkar fish market?

Around the site of today’s Boathouse Residences and Heron Bay, where Sungei Pinang branches off the Serangoon River.

Sources and further reading

• National Library Board, BiblioAsia: Sengkang, From Fisheries Port to Integrated Town (Darren Seow, 2026)
• National Library Board, Infopedia: Sengkang
• National Heritage Board: Hougang Heritage Trail booklet (2020), for the Kangkar market
• Wikipedia: Sengkang (for transport and hospital dates)

This is a historical reference: dates and figures come from the sources above, and where they disagree we say so. Read next: What was Punggol before Punggol · What was Hougang before Hougang · Back to The Memory