Ta' Kassisu entrenchment

In the 18th century, the Hospitaller Knights of St John came up with a grand plan for the defence of Malta - to seal off its shores with a continuous ring of walls and rock-hewn escarpments, and thereby transform the whole island, literally, into one large fortress.

The whole success of this coastal defensive strategy was to hinge around the construction of an unbroken line of entrenchments, the trincieri or trincieramenti. These bastioned seawalls, fitted with their own rock-hewn ditches, were designed to present a physical barrier to invasion - in concept not much unlike the bands of barbed wire entanglements that were planted around the island's shores during World War II.

Not surprisingly, such an overtly ambitious scheme soon ran into serious difficulties and, in reality, only a small portion of the coastline was fitted out in the envisaged manner. Among the entrenchments that were actually built and can still be appreciated today are the ones at Birzebbuga, Spinola, Armier, and Ta' Kassisu, in Mellieha (below).

An interesting feature employed in this type of fortification was the use of rustication, a masonry finish which, in the local context, was only applied to coastal works erected during the course of the 18th century. Various other stretches of entrenchments, however, were also built in a much cheaper and ephemeral manner as rubble walls, or a pietra a secco as they were then known.

The Ta' Kassisu entrenchment, shown here, built to the formal conventions of the bastioned trace, was begun around 1761 as part of the emergency measures triggered off by the episode of the Corona Ottomana. The project, however, was abandoned half-way through after nearly a decade of construction, mainly for the want of money, which had run out, but also because of a growing realisation that the whole notion of an island-wide defensive scheme, involving endless miles of ramparts, was then far beyond the Order's logistical and military capabilities.

This series is appearing every Saturday in collaboration with Miranda Publishers. Photo taken from the forthcoming book Fortress Malta 360°.

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