Every old Maltese house has a story to tell – some are happy, some are sad, some are long, some are short. But every story tells us something about the people who made our Maltese nation what it is today.
Perhaps your own home was used during the war and had an underground shelter, or maybe someone famous slept there. How do you find these stories? It involves time, patience and the urge to play detective. If you like digging into the past to find the present and maybe the future, then house history work is for you. Stop, read and enjoy – and remember to listen to your house. It’s trying to tell you something.
The Balluta area
The seaside area known as Balluta in St Julian’s had started out as a quiet summer resort in the early 19th century, with rich Maltese businesspeople coming to enjoy the beautiful promenade and the seaside.
Over the past 60 years, land development and the area being turned into an entertainment and tourism mecca have left their mark on St Julian’s and its surrounding areas, with many prestigious buildings demolished to make way for hotels and other structures.
Telgħet San Giljan
The steep hill leading down to Balluta Bay is known as Telgħet San Giljan (St Julian’s Hill), which is a very good illustration of the above introduction. The hill still bears the nickname ‘Niżla tal-Kirxa’. Some say that in times gone by people cooked the intestines of animals here, and the Maltese word for intestines is kirxa.
One of the earliest documents to give an indication of how old the house at 7, St Julian’s Hill is, can be found in Kollezzjoni ta’ Deċiżjonijiet tal-Qrati Superjuri ta’ Malta (Vol IIB) (1861-1863) where one comes across a decision by the First Hall of the Civil Court dated 10 October 1863. This is enough evidence to suggest that the house was constructed before this date. The house was a Victorian summer residence, property of an old Maltese family and a grainy photo recently discovered by Francis Galea Naudi in his family album shows that the hill still looks the same as the one shown in the photo of circa. 1880. Mr Galea Naudi is the grandson of the Maltese philanthropist Alfonso Maria Galea.
Photography
According to Margaret Harker in Photographers of Malta 1840-1900, photography in Malta goes back over 150 years. A manuscript diary by a lady visitor at the National Library of Malta describes the French artist Horace Vernet making daguerreotypes of the statue of Grand Master Manoel in March 1840. This was possibly the birth of photography in Malta, making the island one of the earliest places where photography was practised.
From in-depth research, interviewing members of the family who lived in the house, examination of old family photos and the construction of family trees, interesting results have been produced.
The First World War
During the First World War, especially in 1915, the military authorities were unprepared for the great influx of wounded serviceman arriving in Malta from the battlefields of Europe and many a Maltese family offered their homes to servicemen where they could convalesce. About 40 years ago, an elderly English lady, Ms Margaret Utting, used to visit the house in St Julian’s and recount that convalescent servicemen were welcomed to this house as guests. The First World War claimed the lives of two persons who lived in the house. One perished as a result of the Spanish Flu and the other was a victim of war, serving on a merchant ship.
Second World War Shelter
Shelter 17, as it was officially designated, was constructed in around 1940 and only 10 of the original 17 rooms remain. There are three rooms on the left section which are tiled but unventilated and were solely used by the house owners and another family living nearby who had access from its house. The original application for excavating this shelter was made by the late Frank Ellul who lived in the house No 4 (now No. 7) and was employed by the Public Works Department during the war.
The other section was for public use and hinges indicate where doors had once stood and cuttings in the rocks denote where the bunk beds were put up. The general layout of the shelter is such that should a bomb explode near the entrance, the blast is lessened by the angle and length of connecting passages
The shelter complex was once interconnected with another shelter and another entrance had existed in Sqaq Fabri (which is corner with and adjacent to the house), now blocked by development. According to records obtained from the Chief Draughtsman’s Office in the Public Works Department, in July 1942 the shelter was able to accommodate 84 adults and 33 children and, together with the one in Sqaq Fabri, designated Shelter 15a, could accommodate a total of 142 people. In 1943, both shelters were combined and renumbered as Shelter 15. The site plan diagram was extracted from official Public Works Department wartime Blueprint records. Protection Officers issued permits for each family digging its own room (or cubicles as they were popularly known) inside the shelter.
The late Charles Grech in his book Raiders Passed quotes from official police records that on 31 January 1942 at 22.45 hours, bombs hit Sqaq Fabri and the house was partly demolished. Luckily, the shelter was untouched and the people residing in the house and other people living in its environs emerged safe and sound.
Life in the shelter was a nightmare as people moved into the shelter with their children, blankets and bedding, food for the evening and morning as well as their prized personal possessions. Contact was established between people who had never met before. In most shelters electric lighting was non-existent and there was a shortage of fuel and paraffin. Hurricane lamps and candles were the main means of light. Sometimes a mixture of oil and water was used as fuel to ignite a small wick fitted into a cork. Other improvised lanterns were used, as well as those donated by the church authorities.
Although the main entrance is through the basement of the house, the shelter itself extends beneath other properties in St Julian’s Hill and Sqaq Fabri, which is adjacent to the house.
The zigzag construction of the shelter cutting at right angles was to prevent the blast of a bomb from causing great devastation. Some of the rooms are tiled in a symmetrical fashion especially in the left section. The tiling in the right section is irregular revealing that the work was done in a hurry.
The excavation of shelters was done with manual tools as pneumatic tools such as petrol and diesel compressors were rare. The baqqun (pickaxe) was the main implement. Other tools used in the shelter excavation were the marra or fies (mattock), the lexxun (a weeding hoe or adze), the mazza (a small hammer) and the spnar (metal wedge). The Maltese limestone shelters were considered among the safest in the world and the casualties would have been much higher had it not been for them.
Telling the story of your home, neighbourhood and community history is intriguing because every old house and building is an integral part of local history.
This house in Telgħet San Giljan has told its own story. The beauty of an old house lies in the fact that there is no other quite like it. No wonder the identity of areas such as the one described changes with time as such houses become fewer and fewer and consequently there is every reason to have them protected for their historic value and status. Browsing through the records of Maltese houses and ancestry is a fantastic subject as there is so much history concentrated in a relatively small area.