Restoration in a remote place

Heritage NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa has embarked on a challenging restoration task to painstakingly reinstate the Qala Battery in Gozo, which is perched on a cliff edge and has been reduced to mere rubble.

Dedicated to St Anthony, the battery stands on Qala Point in a spectacular location that guards the straits to Comino. The coastal slope on which it is perched allows limited passage for workers, volunteers and the transport of materials.

The masonry of St Anthony’s Battery, as it is also known, built in 1732 by Grand Master de Vilhena, has been neglected for some 200 years, DLĦ said.

The NGO has embarked on the initiative with the Qala local council and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s Environmental Gains Fund, which are all co-funding it.

One of the only two coastal batteries built by the Order of the Knights of St John to have survived in Gozo – the other being at Qbajjar, outside Marsalforn – it was designed on a regular plan, with five faces of embrasures for 11 guns and ancillary accommodation inside.

The DLĦ restoration team has reached an “exciting stage”, said its executive president Simone Mizzi. Work on the outer fabric of the fortification has been almost completed.

Following advice from fortifications expert Stephen Spiteri, the team is reinstating the arched roofs of the internal blockhouse within the battery, which would have been used to house a small garrison and ammunition, she explained. The next step would be to reinstate the water catchment and the well to render this outlying heritage site as autonomous as possible.

“Such far-flung places are abandoned because they have no current use, no drains, no services, water and electricity. But they have huge potential for those seeking hardy visitor destinations,” she said.

“Our challenge is that of seeing such sites through to the next generation by adapting them to modern use even though they are so remote, and in many cases, easier to reach by sea.”

DLĦ is appealing to anybody with information on the whereabouts of the carved coat of arms of Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena, which once adorned the battery’s entrance but was “sadly” stolen just days before work on the site started.