Middleburg Bastion, a section of once Famous A Famosa Fortress is near completion. Middleburg Bastion located beside Melaka River Bank beside the Tourist Information Center (TIC) at Banda Hilir. Next to it is the new completed Melaka River Watermill. The Bastion founded last year was and excavated by The Heritage Department, under the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry. Excavation teams from Malaysia University of Science (USM) also founded human skeletons when doing the excavation works. They estimated the age of the bones between 600 and 1,400 years old.
A Portuguese built Fort between 1512 to 1550 until the Dutch later added a structure which they named “Middleburg” Circa in late 1660 to 1670. A huge sewerage pipe dated 1895 also found. The Heritage Department will excavate and expose the southern side of the foundation of the fort’s walls and its six bastions before using laterite stones from Malacca’s Pulau Upeh to reconstruct the fort. The department will also conserve and restore the 23 historical structures within the fort’s confines.
Datuk Seet Har Cheow when interview by the Star said that the Bastion is scheduled to complete in this July. He said the ministry had allocated RM12.8mil for archaeological and restoration work including acquisition of the former Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank for use as a heritage centre.
The Star highlighted the discovery of the ruins, which resulted in a stop-work order and relocation of the RM23mil Taming Sari viewing tower two years ago.
Middleburg Bastion had a New Wall!
Workers at the Bastion, maybe they imagining live in the 15th Century.
Bastion was to hold attack from the river..
View from Tourist Information Center
— asmaliana
thanks for this info. been seeing the works of the fort. at first wasnt too sure if its new or old. thumbs up for restoration works in malacca!
The Malaysian Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage has proposed a RM12.8 million plan to ‘reconstruct’ a partial fortress wall of ‘A Famosa’ in Malacca. According to report (The Star, Feb 18, 07), the reconstructed wall would offer tourists a glimpse of the original sea-front defensive wall that once guarded the Portuguese against numerous sea invasions.
It is difficult to identify where the fortress walls are today because reclamation and senseless property development have altered the sea front of the historic city and the sea is now a good distance away.
This recent development prompted vested parties to claim it as a shot in the arms for Malacca conservation but how the whole episode involving the archaeological site has been unfolding is worthy news in itself.
The same honorable minister had on a previous occasion came to the very same spot next to Malacca River and proudly launched a grand Malacca state scheme to build a revolving viewing tower. It will take paying tourists for a bird-eye view of the Stadhuys and the Class I historical enclave across the historical river and also remnants of ‘A Famosa’.
Despite overwhelming public objections including from this writer to the proposed Viewing Tower and valid concerns that there would be un-reversible damage to the area’s historical significance, the distinguished Dato’ Seri vehemently defended the state authority’s decision to go ahead with the construction of revolving tower (similar to Singapore’s Carlsberg Tower in Sentosa Island).
In a bizarre twist of fate, critics of the project were vindicated when men working on the tower foundation accidentally stumbled upon structural remains of ‘A Famosa’ bastion!
For the very first time, the scale of the Portuguese Fortress is emerging and this archaeological find adds weight to ancient maps depicting four other similar bastions around ‘A Famosa’.
Fortunately, good sense prevailed and an announcement was made, I suspected reluctantly by the parties concerned to halt the tower project. A decision quickly followed suit and the site of the viewing tower was moved assumingly to a less controversial one.
The same personnel from Perzim (Malacca Museum Board) and the Museum Department who had given the go-ahead with the Viewing Tower project now ironically have a new task at hand, presiding and spearheading conservation work to bring the bastion back alive. Subsequently Phase II will kick in and it involves a more ambitious project to ‘reconstruct’ the missing 300 meter fortress wall from same river side extending to Santiago Gate.
Reconstruction is controversial and is by no mean conservation. The Chinese has experimented with the Great Walls with devastating consequence at popular sites like Badaling near Beijing. Ruins of the Great Walls are rebuilt based on purely academic guesses, and compromises were made at the expense of the integrity and the historical values of the Walls.
Today millions of tourists visiting there are disassociated to this fact, but they are essentially paying 40 yuan pax to merely see mock up walls catering very much to their tourist dollars.
In conservation, original artifacts i.e. rocks, manuscripts, bricks, weapons etc are the essential tools to invoke appreciation and instill better understanding for the historical subject. Every efforts to replicate objects or materials no matter how authentic, should be the last resort to promote historical awareness and should never replace the original artifacts.
Will ‘A Famosa’ suffer the same fate? The answer lies with the Minister and Jabatan Muzium.
2 centuries ago -’A Famosa’ or the beautiful fort, so named by the conquerer Alfonso D’ Albuquerque – almost faded into oblivion until the timingly intervention by Munshi Abdullah and Sir Stamford Raffles. Is ‘A Famosa’ finally enjoying the limelight it solely deserves or perhaps it is too premature to rejoice yet?
Note:
The ‘Taming Sari’ Revolving Tower – a RM23 million project by Perbadanan Melaka has since operated from the old Glutton’s Corner. (Apr 2008)