In his letter A Twisted Name (March 1), Frans H. Said has got it all wrong when he chastised the Malta Tourism Authority for referring to the small bay below the Wignacourt Tower at St Paul’s Bay as Tal-Għażżelin, claiming it should be Tal-Għażżenin.
The explanatory board on the site of the recently built promenade facing the bay has got it right. This says: “The stretch of rocky cove that lies between the Wignacourt Tower and the rocky point below the Boċċi Club, south of the tower, is known as Il-Qala tal-Għażżelin (the weavers’ inlet or cove). The name implies that this was one of those areas where, in the past, weavers and ginners used to ply their trade in transforming cotton or wool into thread.”
His story that rich families lived in the area and were considered lazy (għażżenin) by the locals is pure fabrication. The site around the tower was mostly fields, except for a few villas, until the 1920s and as a small boy I remember parts of it being built with low-lying constructions overlooking the bay.
The villas along the road that faces the tower were built in the late 1890s, long after the bay got its name. The few residents of the fishing village would not have referred to the gentry as lazy; they were too respectful for that when these persons were considered benefactors. I know because my family has on and off lived here since the 1880s and as a small boy I mixed with the farmers and fishermen who sparsely inhabited the village, Qawra and Wardija and they were a very closely-knit and astute community. The population of the area was officially calculated to total only 185 persons in 1901.
I also remember the very large spring, and a smaller one, that took the rain water from Wardija and emptied into the bay. These still exist and the water flows along arched channels under the main village road. As a boy I watched women washing clothes in the stream by looking over a wall that used to overlook a tunnel where, after the war, the Attard Montaltos built a villa blocking the open space that lay between the present-day pharmacy and the old police station. There was a track used by local women to go down and wash skirts and carpets made of sheep wool in this stream; this channel still exists under the building and takes the water along’the culvert to the side of the Bank of Valletta. The larger water tunnel where the weavers (għażżelin) washed their wool is today blocked by an iron gate.
The late, extremely erudite, Franciscan friar Alexander Bonnici refers to the bay as Tal-Għażżenin in his book on the parish church, simply by deducing it may have been a corruption of the Greek Topon Dithalasson taken from the Acts of the Apostles – as if the locals knew any Greek!
Another name that has been corrupted for St Paul’s Bay is the height above the Tatabibu, which the street naming board, not particulary noted for its knowlege, called Tal-Bandieri when it should have been Tal-Bandolieri as this was the area where there was a detachment of the Dejma well before the arrival of the Order of St John.