Pembroke, Malta

Where it sits. Pembroke covers 2.3 square kilometres of coastal shelf on Malta's northeastern seaboard, immediately beyond Paceville and St George's Bay. Swieqi lies to the south, the hilltop hamlet of Madliena to the west, and Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq beyond that to the northwest. The ground rises gently from a rocky shore to a high point of 64 metres near the junction of Suffolk Road and St Andrew's Road. With a population of around 3,900 it is a small locality, and a strikingly young one: the average age is about 33.5 years against a national figure closer to 40.5, and barely two per cent of residents are over seventy. It is also, by Maltese standards, brand new — Malta's newest locality, created out of St Julian's by the Local Councils Act of 1993.

Two towers and a garrison. Before the British, this coast held only watchtowers. St George's Tower went up in 1638 as part of the series financed by Grand Master Giovanni Paolo Lascaris, and Madliena Tower was completed in 1658 as the fourth of the thirteen De Redin towers built along the then-uninhabited northern shore. Those thirteen towers appear on Pembroke's coat of arms and flag. Everything else here is a British creation. Troops were first camped in tents in what was called the Pembroke Cantonment; the first permanent barracks were built between 1859 and 1862 above St George's Bay and named for England's patron saint, followed by St Patrick's and St Andrew's Barracks for Ireland's and Scotland's. The town takes its name from Robert Henry Herbert, 12th Earl of Pembroke, on the authority of his half-brother Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, in 1859.

The defences. Fort Pembroke was built between 24 January 1875 and December 1878, an elongated hexagonal polygonal fort ringed by a ditch and glacis, with underground magazines and casemated quarters for its garrison. It covered the seaward approach to Grand Harbour some six kilometres east and anchored the right flank of the Victoria Lines. Its main armament was three 11-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns and a 64-pounder on a Moncrieff disappearing mounting. By the mid-1890s that was obsolete, and rather than upgrade the fort the British built Pembroke Battery between 1897 and 1899 with two 9.2-inch breech-loading Mk X guns behind reinforced concrete; a single emplacement of it survives between Burma Road and Dun Luigi Rigord Street. The fort became an ammunition store, served as a prisoner-of-war camp holding German prisoners in the Second World War, and since 1987 has housed Verdala International School, which leases the site from the government until 2072.

What survives, and what is remembered. Several garrison structures still stand and are protected. The Pembroke Military Cemetery holds 593 casualties, 315 of them from the Second World War, together with the Pembroke Memorial, whose marble plaques on the plinth of the Cross of Sacrifice name 52 servicemen buried elsewhere on the island outside Commonwealth War Graves care. The former Christ Church Garrison Church, begun in 1915 as St Andrew's Church Room and extended with funds raised from civilians and from the soldiers of both resident battalions, was dedicated on 12 November 1933 and now houses a sports club on Burma Road. Australia Hall, funded in 1915 by the Australian branch of the British Red Cross as a recreation hall and theatre for the wounded ANZAC troops nursed on Malta, stands roofless nearby, one of the island's more poignant ruins.

The other Pembroke: garrigue and coast. When the British left in 1979 they also left several hundred hectares of undeveloped training ground, and a substantial part of it survives as one of the largest continuous stretches of coastal garrigue in Malta, protected under the Natura 2000 network. It is thin, stony, low scrub — thyme, spurge, heather, wild orchids in spring — cut by paths and old firing lanes, and it supports birds and reptiles that have nowhere else to go on this side of the island. Walking north along the shore from St George's Bay takes you out of the resort strip and into open country within twenty minutes, an abrupt transition that few visitors expect. Development pressure on this land is constant and much contested locally.

Getting there and timing. Buses from Sliema, Valletta and the airport serve Pembroke, and it is a straightforward twenty-five-minute walk from Paceville along the coast road. Spring and late autumn are the seasons to choose: the garrigue flowers between February and April, the light on the low cliffs is best in the hour after sunrise, and the paths are unshaded and punishing in July. The shoreline is rock rather than sand, with ladders and platforms rather than a beach.