A General Overview of the Fortifications in the locality of Mellieha

  by Stephen C. Spiteri

More often than not throughout there long history, the main threat to the Maltese islands has come from across the sea.  The appearance of sails on the horizon frequently meant pillage, death and slavery.  The sole refuge afforded to the inhabitants were the few fortified towns and an ever-constant vigilance.  The need for a reliable system to warn of approaching danger  meant that many places along the coastline, particularly the secluded and vulnerable landing sites along the northern shores of the island, had to be watched continually. Amongst such places were the bays and inlets of Mellieha and the Fliegu.

The importance of these areas to the safety of the island was appreciated early in the history of the island. Gian Frangisc Abela, writing in 1647, could already write of a militia post known as il-Borgio tal-Melleha, a place-name which evidently betrays the site of an ancient military structure.  In Abela's time, Melleha was then one of 31 'gaurdie marine ... intorno  l-isola' and one of only five around the island which were important enough to be guarded also by day by the men 'deputati a questa guardia da i Giurati della Città Notabile'.  This pre-occuptaion can be traced even earlier into the middle ages. The mandati records for 1482, for example, show the payments which were made to Frankinu Xelluki  for his services 'comu guardianu dila Mallacha'.  Prof. Stanley Fiorini has shown that on more serious occasions, as happened in 1520 when the Turks landed in force at Melleha,  a military camp (campu) was established along the heights by the Maltese militia in order to keep watch on the Turkish movements  and possibly also serve as a base for the exchange of hostilities.

For most of its history, however, the defence of the Mellieha area fell under the responsibility of the parish of Naxxar.  The militia list of 1419-20 shows that  Naxxar and its associate villages contributed 262 men to the  island’s militia force, 20 of whom owned a horse. Under the Order this responsibility remained the prerogative of the Captain of  the Naxxar militia, and the village itself became the main staging post  for the Birkirkara-Naxxar-Qormi regiment of country militia charged with the defence of the northern parts of the island.

It was not until well into the seventeenth century that Mellieha and the Fliegu received any form of permanent defences. The first fortified structure built to provide some measure of security in the area was the Red Tower, erected during the reign of Grand Master Lascaris Castellar.  This sturdy, massive structure, built on  the same plan as the set of towers erected earlier in the century by Grand Master Wignacourt at St. Paul’s Bay, Marsaxlokk, Marsascala, Delle Grazie, Marsalforn, and Comino, was designed more as a fort rather than a simple watch-post. 

The characteristic feature of the Red Tower (Torre Rossa) were the corner turrets, a rudimentary form of bastions designed to allow some degree of close-in defence by  enabling enfilading fire along the faces of the structure.  The Red Tower or Fort St. Agatha (sometimes also referred to Torre Caura) was followed, nearly a decade later, by two other works of fortification erected in the vicinity at Ghajn Hadid and l-Ahrax.  Actually, these formed part of a string of thirteen signalling towers built by Grand Master de Redin in 1658-9 and designed to form a chain of communication whereby alarms were relayed visually from one post to the next all the way down to Valletta. With the introduction of these towers the knights also re-organized the system of coastal watch, replacing the old system of local militia guards with fixed garrisons paid for by the Universitas.  Each tower was manned by a bombardier and three assistants  with annual salaries of 30 and 24 scudi respectively.

The Ghajn Hadid tower, north of Selmun, was actually the first to be built. Before it was demolished by an earthquake in 1855, it stood some 36 ft high and had two vaulted rooms internally, one on each floor with the main.  The sole entrance was securely located on the first floor and reached by a wooden retractable ladder, sometimes also made of rope. The base of the tower right up to the level of the lower cordon was given a pronounced batter but above this the walls rose vertical to terminate in a  low parapet fitted with shallow embrasures clearly designed to permit the firing of light cannon. A spiral staircase set into the thickness of the wall just to the left of the main entrance led to the roof.  The plan and configuration was the same for the L-Ahrax tower, as for the rest of the De Redin towers.  All mounted small artillery pieces, generally one or two 3-pdr iron cannon kept mostly for signalling purposes and in 1659 these were each issued with two moschettoni di posta, or large heavy muskets.

Next to the Ghajn Hadid tower stood a small defensible room once used to accommodate the militia sentinels. It is not yet clear whether this building actually pre-dates the tower, or if it was added later. A similarly interesting feature are the small rubble-wall pans built around the tower and apparently used to house farm animals. The whole ensemble tends to betray a self- supporting out-post that must have been difficulty to reach and re-supply

No other defensive works were erected in the area throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century.  The picture changed dramatically, however, during the second decade of the following century.  In 1714, under the influence of its French military engineers, the Order embarked upon the construction of an ambitious coastal defence programme.  This practically involved the fortification of every bay and inlet around the island with gun-batteries, redoubts and entrenchments. The reasoning behind this strategy of coastal defence hinged around the notion that the fortification of the bays would prevent the enemy from attempting to disembark troops, and in trying to do so, the losses would be so high that the invading forces would be unable to carry on with an assault on the main fortresses around the harbour.

Between 1715 and mid-1716 a total of some  41,561 scudi was spent on the construction of batteries around the coast of Malta and Gozo.  Mellieha itself was fitted out with two batteries and a redoubt, while the coastline along the Comino Channel was given four redoubts and three  batteries.  The main elements in this defensive strategy were the gun-batteries.  These were designed to mount heavy cannon and engage the enemy warships seeking to disembark the troops. Basically, these consisted of solid open platforms ringed by parapets fitted with embrasures and protected to the rear by blockhouses and redans with loopholed walls.  There was no standard plan to their design although most were given semicircular gun-platforms.  The ones to be seen at Mellieha, Marfa and Armier provide the best surviving examples still to be found in Malta.  The most impressive of  these is undoubtedly the Vendôme Battery at Armier, one of the largest of its type ever built.  Its large semicircular platform is ringed by nine embrasures and a ditch while the gorge is occupied by a blockhouse and redan.  In 1785 it was armed with five 8-pdr and four 12-pdr iron guns.  Later on in the century it was fitted with platforms for mortars.  The Wied Mousa Battery, also situated along the Fliegu coastline, although having lost part of its blockhouse and redan as a result of later interventions, has a very well-preserved battery fitted with thick parapet and 'zonqor'-slabbed gun-platform.   Perhaps the most fascinating, however, was Westreme Battery, located on the right hand side of Mellieha Bay.  Although this has lost its gun-platform and parapet, it retains a unique barrel-vaulted blockhouse, currently under restoration, which is amply fitted with musketry loopholes.  This structure was placed diagonally along the gorge of the battery in such a manner that two of its outer faces served as a redan and helped defend the landward approaches to the work.  Where opportune, such as at L-Ahrax, only a gun-platform was constructed since the existing tower was incorporated into the design and used to provide the necessary storage and accommodation facilities.  A fourth battery, was situated on the left side of the Mellieha bay, on the site currently occupied by the large hotel.  Known as Tonnara, Fedeau, Vendôme and Mellieha Left Battery, this was once armed with four 8-pdr iron cannon.  Interestingly enough, this work also fulfilled a secondary role other than that of defence.  In fact, in 1748 its blockhouse was reconstructed and enlarged to serve as a tunny-processing factory.  The officina della Tonnara could then house 300 barrels of fish.

The redoubts on the other hand were intended to serve as a infantry strongpoints.  The ones erected at Mellieha and along the Fliegu were all designed and built to a standard pentagonal pattern with a simple blockhouse to the rear.  Only one of the five redoubts in the Mellieha locality has actually survived, there rest are either in ruins or were swept away during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The Mellieha middle-redoubt, for example, was dismantled early in the nineteenth century and its stones used to provide building material for the construction of a road across the bay.

As the eighteenth century wore on ambitious schemes for securing  Mellieha and the Fliegu coastline with bastioned entrenchment walls were projected and initiated at Ta’ Kassisu and Armier but these efforts soon ran into difficulties and only short stretches of fortified ramparts were actually built out of the miles of projected ramparts.  The entrenchments at Mellieha constitute the best surviving examples of this style of defences still to be found in the whole of the Maltese islands.

The last element of coastal defence introduced by the knights at Mellieha and the Fliegu were the fougasses. These were a kind of massive rock-hewn stone-firing mortar. Some 48 were built around the shores of Malta in 1741 of which four seem to have been sited at Mellieha and another eight along the Fliegu.  None, unfortunately, have survived to date within the locality under review. 

Of the six regiments of country militia detailed for the defence of the coast throughout the eighteenth century, it was the regiments of Naxxar and  B’Kara which were charged with the defence of the northern parts of the island.  In 1716, the Regiment of Naxxar consisted of 477 men and was responsible for defending the stretch of  Fliegu coastline   between Torri l’Ahrax and Cirkewwa, while that of B'kara was responsible for the defence of Mellieha Bay and St. Paul's Bay.

As things turned out, however, none of the coastal fortifications at Mellieha ever played any significant role in  defence  of the Island.  When invasion eventually materialized in 1798, the network of batteries, entrenchments and redoubts  was easily overcome. French troops under the command of General Baragey D'Hilliers were landed at Mellieha and St. Paul's bay, where the defences there were under the command of the Knights De Bizier and De La Penouse respectively, while Fort St. Agatha was under the command of the knight St. Simon. The Maltese soldiers offered what little resistance they could before hastily retreating to Mdina.

Most of the coastal defences were retained by the British throughout the first decades of the nineteenth century but gradually many of these military works were handed over to the civilian government as they were no longer considered necessary for the defence.  L'Ahrax tower for example, was taken over as the Governor's summer residence, and Wied Mousa battery was eventually converted into a hostel.  The majority of the towers and batteries had been shed off by the military by the late 1830’s. Thereafter none of these works continued to feature in the islands’defensive stategy, particularly after 1860 when the British abandoned the idea of resisting the enemy on the beaches, adopting instead a mighty fortress system conceived primarily for the defence of the Grand Harbour. 

As a result, the northern reaches of Malta remained practically unfortified for the  remainder of the nineteenth century. The adoption of a defensive line along the ridge of commanding ground north of the old City of Mdina, later known as the Victoria lines, only helped isolate further the largely uninhabited northern parts and reduce the threat of  an inland thrust into the heart of the island. By the beginning of the 1900s, however the British realized that this defensive line was not as effective as it was thought to be and in 1907 the position was abandoned in favour of an attempt to revert to the policy defending the island's northern shores.  To this end, a whole new system of  trenches and gun-emplacements, known as Ridge Defences, were cut out along the Mellieha heights. Well preserved trenches and gun pits dating to this period can bee seen along length of the Mellieha, Bajda and Wardija ridges.

A serious effort to fortify and defend the beaches at Mellieha was only undertaken during the late 1930s prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.  This time the new element of defence was the concrete machine gun bunker, or pill-box as it was popularly known.  A large number were spread out along the beaches and across the country side in a series of stop-lines  designed to hinder enemy landings and inland advances. The earlier pillboxes and beach post built in 1938 as a direct result of the threat of an Italian invasion following the Abyssinian crisis were  elaborately camouflaged with rubble stone cladding.  A interesting complex example of this kind of fortification  is to be seen hugging the rocky foreshore beneath Westreme battery.  Later examples were constructed  to simpler and more standardized patterns that lent themselves more easily to mass production. This, inevitably, was a development which reflected a greater sense of urgency and the need for rapid construction that accompanied the growing threat of war and invasion. In these works, paint-work became the accepted method for applying camouflage.

Undoubtedly, the most substantial and complex work of fortification erected by the British in the area  was Fort Campbell, built in 1937-38.  Effectively this was the last fort built on the island and was intended to replace the Wardija examination battery erected hastily during the First World War.  By the late thirties, however, fortification design had departed significantly from the maxims of permanent defences practiced in the preceding centuries as  fortifications had to contend with an ever-increasing range of new destructive weapons, the most serious threat of which came to manifest itself in the form of aerial bombardment.  The plan of Fort Campbell, as a result, reflects many new provision incorporated in the design of permanent fortifications.  Whilst earlier forts had relied mainly on a low silhouette to blend them in with their surroundings and conceal them from the enemy these efforts were now no longer enough to hide them from the eyes of the enemy searching from above.  For when viewed from the air fortifications revealed visibly clearand distinct traces.  At  Fort Campbell the formal ramparts and ditches were abandoned and replaced instead by a thin wall constructed to resemble the field walls and the plan broken up into an irregular trace designed to imitate the pattern of terraced fields.  Close-in perimeter defence, previously provided by counterscarp galleries or caponiers, and earlier still, batteries in the flanks of bastions, was provided instead by a number of small machine gun posts, or bunkers, placed at irregular intervals along the line of defence, particularly where the enceinte changed direction, and in other places by a few rifle loopholes.

Internally, the enclosure was rather barren, for the vast area was purposely occupied by a only small number of buildings and then great care was taken to scatter all the main component parts of the forts - the command post, gun emplacements, water tank, direction posts and barrack accommodation and magazines - across the whole area in order not to create any concentration of buildings that would stand out quite clearly when seen from the air.  The main armament of the fort, two coastal guns,  were mounted in concrete emplacements place roughly in the centre of the enclosure. Each gun emplacement was fitted with adjoining underground guncrew accommodation, magazines and shelters. The 6-inch guns were placed on 45 degree elevation mountings which increased the range of the guns to 24,500 yards. A third gun emplacement, consisting of a sunken concrete gun pit, with a nearby partially underground magazine was added sometime later.

The nerve centre of the fort was the Battery Observation Post (BOP) which was situated roughly in the middle of the enclosure. This long building, stepped building contained the examination signals room and gun control room. The plotting room was however situated in a nearby under ground rock-hewn chamber.  In 1943 the Battery Observation Post was modified to house a C.A. No.1 MkII Radar mounted on the roof.  Barrack accommodation, unlike in other forts, was sited outside the fortified perimeter and consisted four barrack blocks capable of accommodating 180 men.  The officers' mess, dining room, cookhouse, ablution room, lecture room and sergeants' mess were similarly placed outside the defensive perimeter.

Apart from the six defence posts along the main perimeter, there were two other concrete bunkers acting as direction posts. An important adjunct to the defence were the searchlight needed to light up the sea.  The Defence Electric Lights (DEL) were situated a considerable distance away from the fort and were placed down along the shoreline to the north and west.  There were four emplacements for searchlights (one of which is demolished).  All were protected by metal shutters.  The electricity required to work the searchlights came from the generators located inside the fort and the cable which served the lights was placed in shallow rock-hewn trenches for protection.   Another lightly fortified enclosure was also established in the vicinity of Mellieha. This was the civil defence depot.  It was, enclosed by a light wall and named Fort Mellieha.

As things turned out the much feared Axis invasion never materialized.  What the war failed to destroy, however, was demolished by the development that accompanied the post-war period.  Many concrete works of fortifications and emplacements were unfortunately swept aside to make way for roads, houses and hotels.  Even so the area is still relatively one of the richest in Hospitaller and British coastal fortifications, all of which deserve to be protected and conserved.