Anyone who has visited the Ispica caves in neighbouring Sicily will have developed a taste for troglodyte dwellings. Mellieħa boasts its own set of caves in the valleys leading down to the bay at Għadira.
The discovery of fossil remains of hippopotamus bones in one of the Mellieħa caves gives a sense of how far back in time this place goes. Names like Wied ta’ Ruman (Roman Valley) and Għar Sqalli (Sicilian Cave) hint at how steeped in its own history this locality really is.
Pottery shards are a common find directly below these caves, many of which are found on an inland cliff overlying Tas-Sellum. When the cave dwellings were finally abandoned by the occupants not so long ago, they began to be used for storage.
Adapting troglodyte dwellings to make them more habitable with add-on constructions has long been the case at Mellieħa. A hotel in the area has its pool bar in one of these caves. Some of the houses in this village which splays the valley have the kitchen or bedroom area hewn out of solid rock.
A real estate company promoting developments in the area gushes about “bewitching cave dwellings and houses that cling to the rock face”.
One particular example of an early troglodyte dwelling extension is fondly named Għar u Casa, combining the word for cave in Maltese and house in Italian, with a humorous link to the word għarukaża, meaning something shameful. “There is even a street named after it which runs through remnants of fields edging what used to be the main watercourse.
Walking down a dirt track called Għar u Casa Street, under Mellieħa Heights, one gets a sense that things just don’t seem right.
In earlier times the inhabitants must have been needed some kind of rope from above, or a ladder (sellum) from below, to reach the less accessible caves. Possibly the modern equivalent is the snakes and ladders of the planning application process which grants or refuses penthouse extensions.
In 2004, an assessment on the Mellieħa area flagged unauthorised excavations in part of the cave area and some concrete extensions.
The Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s northwest local plan summed up the main planning issues of the Mellieħa outcrop and underlying area. Conflicting and competing land uses to meet residential, leisure and entertainment functions were evident. Illegal storeys and excessive building heights prevailed, while urban sprawl still threatened ecologically sensitive areas.
By legal notice, the inland cliff and caves were granted ecological and archaeological protected status under an emergency conservation order in 1999. They were graded as a Class B site of archaeological value, viewed as “very important and to be preserved at all costs”. Such a grading, normally only valid for six months, prescribes that adequate measures are to be taken to preclude any damage from immediate development.
The area was proposed for exclusion from the building zone in the local plan, which dragged on for years unapproved, and remained in draft form until 2006. In the same year the plan was finalised the protected area was used as a trade-off to open up a similar-sized tract of countryside on the other side of the Mellieħa development boundary.
A person who applied for a villa on the ridge jutting into the ‘safeguarded area’ has been trying to put up a boundary wall “to delineate” the property since 1994. With every application filed the property boundary looms larger each time.
A large ‘private property’ sign warns people away and puts off anyone wanting to visit wartime ruins and other archaeological remains in the area. An appeal against Mepa’s refusal to allow the wall to go up is due to be heard in November.
Despite the best efforts of planners to keep the villa area of Santa Marija Estate separate from Tas-Sellum, an element of sprawl has crept in. In the wake of the portly Tas-Sellum development, a specific amendment of the local plan was ushered in last year.
Change in character between the multi-storey development and the one-storey bungalow area was too abrupt, and a row of bungalow sites were affected by the new scheme. The local plan notes that although the site was originally covered by planning permission for tourism development, subsequent permitting saw a twist toward residential structures.
What started as five blocks in an early application has sprouted another seven blocks in later phases of the development. A third party appeal on amended plans in which the number of apartments has been increased from 52 to 72, is to be heard in November.
Mepa has asked for a bond as a condition for the development of vacant land at Wesgħat il-Narċis, where 260 square metres are to be kept as a public area with a two-storey limit on the rest. However, the deposit of a bond may not be enough to guarantee that a developer fulfils an obligation to retain part of an area as public open space.
The developers will first have to get rid of the rusting bulldozers. Six of them have been abandoned in this graveyard for heavy plant machinery for the past five years or more. An enforcement order calling for direct action is already five years old.