New Għaxaq school will have major negative impact on cultural heritage

The relocation of St Albert school from Valletta to a stretch of agricultural land in Ghaxaq will entail the loss of protected rubble walls and the demolition of a farmhouse considered to merit a Grade 2 level of protection.

Field rooms, huts, wells, rubble ramps, quarrying features, stone heaps (brag), and country tracks meriting a Grade 3 level of protection will also be lost.

This emerges from an Environment Impact Assessment documenting the impact of building the new school in this rural area, which lies outside the development zone. The study lists 21 features of cultural heritage importance located within or on the boundary of the proposed development.

Following discussions with the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage the school was redesigned with the aim of retaining and conserving five of these features including two country tracks together with their rubble walls, field rooms, and a Mutagħla (rubble ramps connecting fields), which are considered to merit a Grade 2 level of protection.

While noting that certain features, including rubble walls, will be retained and restored as part of the development, the EIA concludes that “the scale of the loss of the recorded heritage features within the site is considerable”.

Rubble heaps which will be lost as a result of development

The loss of heritage will include the majority of rubble walls within the site of the proposed development, including a significant number of Grade A and Grade B walls.

Moreover, in the case of the features that will be retained, the change to their landscape setting will be significant.

The EIA concludes that overall, the new development will have “a negative impact of major significance on the recorded cultural heritage features” as well as a negative impact of major significance “on the setting of the culture heritage features that are to be retained”.

Other negative impacts of the project identified in the EIA include the loss of 28,150sq.m of agricultural land, the loss of 46 protected trees, and a negative impact on views in Ghaxaq, which undermine the rural character and sense of openness of the Dawret Hal Ghaxaq area.

The land was designated for the development of a school in local plans approved in 2006 after being identified for this purpose by the Planning Authority in a site selection exercise. But the project came back to haunt the church hierarchy during the Zonqor controversy.

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat rebutted criticism by Archbishop Charles Scicluna on the proposed development of the American University of Malta on a 90,000sq.m site at Zonqor Point, by referring to the Ghaxaq school plans.

The Dominicans want the Ghaxaq college to be a spacious alternative to Valletta’s St Albert College, which is over 70 years old and lacks sufficient space for lecture rooms, laboratories and facilities for sports and extra-curricular activities. The area would also be more accessible to families in