1669 - Menni's Map of Gibraltar - Section 2
El Castillo, Villa Vieja, la Barcina, together with a larger area known as la Turba of which only a small part is shown but not identified here, (but see section 3) were the names of the four main districts of the town.
La Turba probably comes from the Arabic for the Red Sands – “Turbah al-Hamra”
Also Baluarte de San Pedro and later Hesse’s demi-Bastion
. . . el castillo lo cerca el muro, que se continua desde el hasta el baluarte del Canuto dicho ahora de San Sebastian, que es hasta la mar.
Portillo fails to add that it was also known as the Baluarte de San Pablo – which suggests that the name may have been given to the bastion after the early 17th century. The date and wording of the plan shown below seems to confirm this - but if it does, I don’t know why or when.
El Baluarte del Canuto - (Cristóbal Rojas - 1607)
Plan of part of the Northern defences (1628 – Luis Bravo de Acuña – Cropped and adapted)
In the above plan Bravo shows San Pedro (B), San Pablo (C) and the Puerta de Tierra (N) - as well as the connecting Muralla de San Bernardo (Grand Bastion), perhaps the most important of the bastions and walls of the area. Menni, however, curiously fails to caption San Bernardo.
One possible translation for “el Mentidero” is that of a place where people gather to gossip.
I am not sure what this structure adjoining part of the southern wall of la Barcina with a section of the Line Wall just to the south of the Old Mole was supposed to serve. The fact that it was rebuilt and improved upon by Menni – it appears in the plan in red - doesn’t help much either – other than it was obviously thought to be worth the trouble and expense to do so.
In another map produced for the Prince of Hesse immediately after the Anglo-Dutch capture of the Rock some 30 odd years later, this area is shown as what appears to have been an empty space.
Crop of a map of Gibraltar (1704 – Col. D'Harcourt)
Or Plataforma de Santa Ana – later converted and renamed by the British as Orange Bastion.
The northern section of Irish Town was originally called Calle Santa Ana – or Santana. The theory is that it took its name from the a small hermitage which stood at the corner with the junction with Market Lane.
In 1581 the Friars of the Orden de la Merced built a bigger monastery around this chapel . When the British took over in the 18th century it became known as White Cloister and was used mainly as a navalstore. Whether the “Plataforma” took its name from either the street or the convent – or vice versa - I don’t know.
M. “Los Almacenes de la Pólvora”
The stores seem to have occupied the lower southern side of the south-eastern walls of the Castle precinct – or perhaps even the entire length of the with a pathway running through it from the more eastern of the two Castle Gates which is today known as the Gatehouse and was once erroneously thought to have been the site of the 12th century Almohad Gate. Part of it and the Gatehouse itself was later also used as a gunpowder store by the British.
The Gatehouse
Also sometimes referred to as Puerta de España and by the British as Landport Gate.
Quoting Portillo yet again:
Queda en este muro la Puerta de Tierra con su Alcayde, y dice así porque por ella, y no por otra, se sirve esta ciudad por la tierra . .
Menni’s plan is ambiguous.
For a start it appears to suggest that the gate’s southern exit from the town was positioned exactly in-between the wall that separated la Barcina from Villa Vieja. Whereas there is considerable evidence that there were two completely separate gates during the early 17th century – La Puerta de Tierra within the Barcina and La Puerta de Granada at the northern end of Villa Vieja..
Encircled bottom - Puerta de Tierra – encircled top - Puerta de Granada (1620s – Bravo de Acuña)
Portillo adds to the confusion with the following.
. . una de las puertas de esta ciudad que está en Villa Vieja de ella, que dicen La Puerta de Granada, obra morisca y muy de ver, que con ser antiquísima parece que se acabó hoy de hacer, y es de admirable arquitectura, es esculpida una llave . . .
Taking both of Portillo’s comments as correct I can only assume that by the 17th century civilian land access to Spain must have been almost exclusively through La Puerta de Tierra while la Puerta de Granada was used by the military to access the various defensive walls along la Muralla de San Juan on the north-western slopes of the Rock. This would certainly have been the case in 1703, when the Round Tower or El Pastel was built by Spanish engineer Diego Luis Arias.
On the plan above the King’s Line was Muralla de San Juan. The Round Tower itself was at the very end of it. After having had problems defending it, the British destroyed it.
Despite all this I still find it hard to interpret the structures referred to by Menni as two rectangular sections coded in red - one in the Barcina, the other in Villa Vieja. Two small guard houses might be a possibility.
Later Waterport Gate on the site of today’s Grand Casemates Gates
The front section of the gate is shown as having been “rebuilt and perfected”. The original entrance to what later became la Barcina - which was in effect a beach right up to perhaps the 13th century - were a series of wooden palisades. The person must likely to have built the first proper Puerta de Mar was therefore probably the Merinid ruler of Morocco, Abu-l-Hasan who retook Gibraltar from Castile in the mid-14th century.
As recorded famously by Ibn Battuta’s scribe, Ibn Juzzay:
The sultan Abu-l-hasan . . applied himself further to strengthen Gibraltar, by causing a thick wall to be built at the foot of the rock, surrounding it on all sides, as the halo surrounds the crescent moon . . . He built the arsenal there too ( for there was no arsenal in the place before ) as well as the great wall which surround the red mound, starting from the arsenal and extending to the tile yard
Since then, however, designing defensive improvements on what was in effect the most important entrance into town from the sea, must have been almost a hobby for every engineer, of whatever nationality, the happened to be in Gibraltar at the time.
Puerta de la Mar and old Mole (1605 – Unknown but possibly working for Cristobal Rojas) )
Menni’s plan does not make it easy to guess what it was that he had “rebuilt and perfected” in this regards.
Also known as La Torre de Homenaje, La Torre de la Vega, Torre Blanca and and La Calahorra.
This last name is probably a corruption of what may have been the name given to it by original Muslim owners – “al-Qal'ah al-hurrah” which means “the Independent Citadel”.
In English it is invariable known by the politically dubious name of “The Moorish Castle” which is in fact is incorrect in so far as the word “Castle” properly defines the entire walled area of the precinct in which the tower was built – as Menni quite correctly describes on his map. Viewed as such it is supposed to be the largest Islamic Castle in Iberia.
According to Portillo:
Tiene este castillo dentro de si una torre que llaman la Calahorra, nombre a mi parecer Árabe; Tiene por delante un reducto que llaman La Giralda, . . . capaz de recibir gente bastante para defender la fuerza como vio el año 1333 cuando estubo sobre ella el Rey Don Alonso sin aprovecharle una torre que le fabrico encima que con su nombre dura hoy parte de ella.
Although not named by Menni,, the wall joining the Tower of the Castle with (T) (Salto del Lobo) was known as La Muralla de San Ignacio. That last kink at (T) probably describes the ruins of the elusive Torre de Don Alonso. It was supposed to have been built by Alonso Pérez de Guzmán during the very first siege of Gibraltar in 1309.
Anonymous plan identifying the tower of Don Alonso above the castle – It supposedly one of the oldest know map showing Gibraltar (Mid-16th century)
Recent archaeological research suggests that this nowadays insignificant blocked-up entrance was the site of a 12th century Islamic gate to the Castle known as Bab al Fath – The Gate of Victory. It is supposed to have been built was during the founding of t Madinat al Fath - the town of Gibraltar - by the Almohad Caliph Abd al Mu’min which he named Madinat al Fath
(See M above)
S. “Puestos exteriores que llaman las Harquías”
Several walls in this area but not necessarily all of them, are labelled on several early 18th C plans as ‘Arquia’ or “l’Arquia”. On some plans it appears to refer only to the defensive walls protecting the pathway to the Round Tower - which is not shown as a feature on Menni’s plan.
L'arquia and Round Tower (1706 - Peter Schenk)
A steep cliff facing north towards the Isthmus which was also known as Peregil. The British called it the Wolf’s Leap. It is much mentioned in the 19th c literature as Willis’s Battery was construct on the flat plateaux above the precipice.
Portillo:
. . . esta sobre el Castillo que es donde dicen el Salto del Lobo; corriendo la muralla con baluartes y trabeses a lo moderno a la torre de Don Alonso.
Hay una (ermita) antiquísima, y está en la Villa Vieja, que como diré, este barrio y el Castillo solo tenían poblado los Moros, con nombre ahora de Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza. A los muy antiguos de esta Ciudad siempre les oí llamar Santiago, después Santa Brígida, y últimamente Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza; y fue la Iglesia Parroquial antigua.
Y. “San Sebastián”
Portillo:
En la Barcina estaba la ermita de San Sebastián muy antigua, parece fábrica de Cristianos, aunque no la sacristía.
Northern section of la Barcina - The building with a cross above its tower (top, right) is the Ermita de San Sebastian - The long building with the semi-circular roof is the atarazana possibly of mid14th century origins (1627 – Bravo de Acuña – cropped)
See Section 1
Gate connecting the old part of town with the new – Villa Vieja to and from Calle Real
See Section 1.
An unknown medieval wall or bastion possibly of Islamic origins but no longer extant.
o. “Puerta de la referida fortificación”
Menni identifies it in what I have taken to be yellow and I am almost certain that little of it was ever built. The top bit of the proposed fort is included in Section 2
Plan showing North Front morass (1726 – Herman Moll (cropped)
The Old Mole, later known as the Devil’s Tongue. The dotted line joining the eastern end of the mole to the Baluarte de San Pablo probably identifies the shoreline of a beach.
The history of the mole is too involved to go into here. Suffice to suggest that it was only built as a proper mole - rather than a breakwater - in the mid to later 16th C.
q. “Desembarcadero limpio de peñas? (pinos?)”This entire area - including the northern side of the Old Mole - was notorious during the 17th century for its tendency to collect rubbish and silt making it difficult for boats to approach
rr. “El ¿Aljauli? quartel antiguo y restaurado tres años ha”Possible an old Islamic barracks found within the Castle precinct which had been renovated previously. The name “Aljauli” sounds Arabic but I have no idea what it means.
Gate connecting la Barcina to Calle Real
With many thanks to my digital friend Rafael Fernández. Without his endless help and advice I would not have been able to write these essays on Octavio Menni's map of Gibraltar.