Even though to some it may appear very much like shutting the stable door after the horses have bolted, if there is any hope of preserving what we can of our towns and villages, that can only be done by understanding the values they encompass and seeing the Maltese village as the focus of collective memory.
That was the general thrust of a symposium held last week at the Grand Salon of the National Museum of Archaeology by Wirt iz-Zejtun. The NGO which focuses on the heritage sector has been holding biennial symposia since 2012 mostly on the Zejtun and South-East heritage but this time it has branched out to focus on the Maltese village heritage as a whole.
It consequently brought together researchers, historians and academics to share their knowledge and to help people appreciate better our villages.
Joseph Schiro, the first speaker, went back entire centuries to the time when Zejtun as a whole did not exist on maps but instead it was described as 'contrada di Santa Caterina' maybe because of the significant population cluster in the south-eastern region of Malta, midway between the harbour of Marsaxlokk and the Grand Harbour, threatened now and again by incursions by pirates and Turks.
Dr Keith Buhagiar who is a hydrogeologist explained there is a significant difference between the north and the south areas of Malta with regards to the cultivation of fields. In the northern area a series of river-carved valleys provided shelter and easy access to perched aquifer deposits while in the south there was a general lack of water and so settlement and agriculture were more difficult.
At Wied Hezrun, near Rabat, there are underground channels to enable irrigation which enabled the farmers of the late Medieval period to produce three crops in a year.
Dr George Said Zammit pointed out that cotton production opened Malta to international trade. The central courtyard and one-storey dwellings became the rule in most Maltese houses with the upper floor, or ghorfa, being a later addition. The siqifah (the arched entrance to a cluster of houses, such as one finds in Mdina) is also a later addition. This arrangement of domestic space is an African derivation.
It also seems that many outlying settlements decreased as the villages grew in size and people sought the proximity of other people to living on their own.
Professor Denis de Lucca focused on the many Baroque churches in Malta as a phase in the history of the Maltese towns and villages which has been extraordinarily rich in the tradition it launched.
It was Cardinal Carlo Borromeo who wrote guidelines to rule how churches should be built in the post-Tridentine period. Till this day, the village parish church, rising above the surrounding residences, became the focal point of village life and the celebrations held within it became the main communal events in the village life.
Besides what happened inside the churches, the processions, which originate around the 16th Century, both on the saint's feast day and on Good Friday, took the Christian message out on the streets.
Perit Ruben Abela, the founder of Wirt iz-Zejtun and its leading light, spoke about the influence of the British period and the post-Independence era on the Maltese village, and what he had to say did not make for pleasant hearing.
The British at first wanted to please the Maltese - hence the many Gnien tal-Kmand donated to many villages in the first years of the British period, all built by Michele Cachia, who hailed from Zejtun.
The widespread production of cotton was replaced by other crops such as mulberry (cawsli) and Zejtun was the first place where potato-growing was introduced.
Then came hard times - a bad plague outbreak took place in 1813 and also in 1837 while there were two outbreaks of cholera in 1856 and 1887. Mainly, these outbreaks could have been the impact of the Scirocco winds and lack of proper hygiene in houses. The British built the hospitals of Bighi and Mtarfa which came to be very useful when in World War I Malta became the Nurse of the Mediterranean.
The population of Malta doubled from 1842 to 1931 and Valletta reached the peak of its population in 1881 when it had 24,800 residents or 16.5% of the population of Malta.
As regards transport, the Malta Railway ran for some years between Valletta and Mdina until it was replaced by buses.
In the post-war years Harrison and Hubbard led the post-war reconstruction work in the Three Cities and Valletta. Later on, on the British model, two garden cities - San Gwann and Santa Lucija - were created. And later housing estates sprouted all over Malta.
Perit Veronica Micallef delivered a fascinating speech on the Maltese village as a focus of collective memory.
She focused on Paola and explained how a palazzo in the heart of the village, Palazzo Caraffa, was pulled down, its coat of arms preserved in a museum and it subsequently became the Empire Cinema, then a social club and still later a Marks & Spencer outlet. Yet the buildings next to it remained more or less the same. She saw in this the continuity of the Maltese village and thus the possibility of the continuity of the Maltese values they enshrine.
Professor Conrad Thake was the last Maltese speaker and he really let rip. He went back to a paper written almost 50 years ago by Pat Richardson entitled, even in those years, The Rape of a village in which he decried the changes which already then were ruining the Maltese landscape. His main complaint regarded the wide boulevards that were cutting through the village cores to lead to the church, such as in Zurrieq.
Later came other changes which have completed the rout such as the rationalization exercise which mopped up unbuilt land and then the animal called SPED and the relaxation of building height rules.
Today Malta has a population of 475,000 apart from the tourists and Malta has the highest density anywhere in the EU at 1315 persons per sq km. There are 372,000 cars on the road.
The periphery of villages have become dormitory areas where people go to sleep, without any connection to the village core.
The last speaker was Professor Brian W Blouet who gave a rather humorous account of the history of Malta already outlined in the preceding speeches which more or less followed the main thrust of the history of Malta.
In question time, Judge Toni Abela pointed out the responsibility of banks which, by making finance accessible to the working classes enabled them to become land developers and the construction sector exploded as a result.
He was replied to by Joe Cannataci who said the main culprit was lack of governance by successive governments.