Fr Mark Cauchi has given some details on the history of Manoel Island (The Sunday Times, November 21). He wrote that it was called Bishop’s Island because it was owned by the Cathedral Chapter, that a part exchange was carried out between the Bishop and the Grand Master, and that the chapel of St George was built on it after the Great Siege.

It appears that the first exchange took place in 1543 when Grand Master Juan de Homedes (1536-1553) transferred the island to the Cathedral Chapter. From the 16th century it was referred to as the isolotto or isoletto in maps and documents. It was used as a temporary lazaretto during the plague epidemic of 1592-93.

The second exchange took place 100 years after the first, in the records of Notary Lorenzo Grima (1595-1649). On July 18, 1643, the island reverted to the Order in exchange for some lands named del Fideni, probably tal-Fiddien, and Grand Master Jean Paul Lascaris Castellar (1636-1657) erected the first permanent lazaretto.

As regards the chapel, it is very clearly shown, with a sloping roof, on a manuscript map drawn around 1574 by the military engineer Ludovico Cesano, extant in Naples at the Biblioteca Nazionale, which I illustrated in my book Valletta Città – A Map History (1566-1600), published in 2003.