ViGiLO - Din l-Art Ħelwa
ISSUE 57 • MAY 2022
29
THE UPPER
NORTHWEST FRONT
Trekking along the Victoria Lines (Part Two)
by Joseph Galea Debono
In this second article about the Victoria Lines (the first one appeared in Vigilo 56), I capture some of the impressions from walks which, for the past years, Professor Anthony Bonanno and I have experienced in our surveys of the historical, military and archaeological features which are encountered in the area along the Great Fault. We had occasion to recount these in joint lectures that we had delivered at Din l-Art Ħelwa’s Maurice Caruana Curran Hall some years back but more recent walks along the North West Front have yielded yet more sites of interest.
T
he previous article included an overview of the historical context in which this formidable defensive line was built by the British during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, when the need was felt to protect the harbours around Valletta and the urban conurbations around them from a possible invading enemy force landing on the beaches in the north of Malta. It then covered the fortifications spanning the sector between Madliena on the north-east coast to the centre of the island north of Mosta, stopping at Tarġa Gap. This feature deals with the Upper North West Front from Tarġa Gap to Fomm ir-Riħ Bay on the west coast.
Tarġa Battery On the Mosta–Burmarrad road, by the commemorative plaque marking the silver jubilee of Queen Victoria, who gave her name to this feat of military engineering, and opposite a World War II machine-gun pillbox, which now serves as a bus-stop shelter, the defensive wall branches off to the left of the main thoroughfare. It then winds for about one kilometer, passing by Tarġa Battery built in 1887, which was intended to cover the stretch between Fort Mosta and the Dwejra Lines. However, it was never armed. Most of the site of the battery, except for the barrack rooms fronting Top right: The start of the trek at Tarġa Gap Right: Tarġa Battery mostly hidden by overgrown trees
