Malaysia’s Notre Dame in the Jungle set for RM3mil restoration

Ruins nicknamed Malaysia’s “Notre Dame in the Jungle” are being restored at Pagar Tras, on the fringes of the Bukit Seraya Forest reserve in Seberang Perai, with an estimated RM3 million still needed to complete the work.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church earned its nickname from two towering belfries, a rose window, and arched windows built to echo Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, a design brought by French missionaries who settled the area in the 1830s.

Restoration efforts are being led by the Kulim parish community together with the Seberang Perai City Council (MBSP), the Penang state government, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), and Think City Sdn Bhd.

French missionaries and Hakka migrants built the original church

Missionaries from the Society of Foreign Missions Paris (MEP) travelled to Penang’s mainland from Pulau Tikus in the 1830s, buying land to build a school and a wooden chapel for the villagers of Pagar Tras.

The community that grew around the chapel was largely Hakka migrants from Guangdong, China, many of whom had already converted to Catholicism before arriving in Malaya.

Loo Ah Yet, a tin and rubber towkay in the village, donated the land on which the church, school, and community space were eventually built, a legacy his great-grandson Joachim Loo shared at a recent heritage workshop on Pagar Tras.

The larger Sacred Heart of Jesus church that replaced the original wooden chapel opened in 1895, blending Romanesque and Neo-Gothic design elements typical of 19th-century French church architecture.

Malayan Emergency forced the community to abandon the village

The village’s decline began when British colonial authorities declared Pagar Tras a “black area” during the Malayan Emergency, forcibly resettling families to New Villages in Sungai Lembu and Machang Bubok.

Joachim Loo recounted how his uncle, a member of the British Malayan Home Guard, was taken from the family home by communist insurgents and later found dead by a stream across the road.

The church closed in 1948 and fell into ruin, with a new Sacred Heart of Jesus church eventually built in Kulim in 1957 to serve the displaced community.

Some artefacts from the original church, including stained-glass windows and Stations of the Cross plaques, were relocated to the new Kulim church, where they remain visible today.

State government has committed RM1 million so far

The Penang state government has allocated RM1 million through MBSP to reinforce the remaining structure, with an additional RM3 million needed to restore the church’s façade.

MBSP has already spent about RM400,000 on research, structural studies, and reinforcement work, according to Penang Archdiocese Heritage Conservation Committee chairman Francis Chen.

USM Centre for Global Archaeological Research director Professor Dr Stephen Chia said the restoration plan draws inspiration from the ruins of St Paul’s in Macau, now a major tourist attraction in the special administrative region.

Plans for the next phase include a gallery to display artefacts, stories, and images from the old church, alongside landscaping and public facilities such as a café, toilets, and a car park.

Restoration could open a new religious tourism trail

Penang Tourist Guides Association president Clement Liang said the ruins already attract French and European visitors, along with religious pilgrims interested in the MEP missionaries’ history in the region.

There are plans to link Pagar Tras with the Kulim parish church and St Anne’s Church in Bukit Mertajam as part of a pilgrim’s trail once restoration work is completed.

Surviving artefacts from the original church include baptism, marriage, and death records dating back to the 1800s, along with religious relics kept safe at the Kulim church.

Think City’s Seberang Perai programme manager Kishore Ramdas was among those who attended the recent heritage workshop, alongside Penang Archbishop Cardinal Sebastian Francis and researchers from USM.