Sa Maison Garden (part one)

Abstract

Quite near the gate known as Right Sally Port at Floriana is the entrance that leads to a half-forgotten Garden, open to the public, and officially known as "Sa Maison Garden", after the name of its earliest owner, the Chevalier de Sa Maison, who built a hunting-lodge and laid out a garden there in the first decade of the 17th century. This lodge later served as a secret meeting-place for the French Knights who were Members of the Malta Masonic Branch of the Grand Orient when their Lodge was set up in the 18th century. To the Maltese the place came to be known as the "Gnien tal-Milorda", Milady's Garden, as a tribute to the memory of the Lady Julia Lockwood, who took over the lodge and garden early in the 19th century, and showed indeed a marked interest in her new home from which she distributed alms once a week to the numerous paupers who flocked to her house for charity. Towards the middle of the past century the lodge and garden passed into the hands of the Military Authorities when Lady Lockwood had to surrender the place after a long struggle with the War Office as recorded by the researcher Guze Cassar Pullicino in the "Sunday Times of Malta" of October 8th, 1972. The War Office caused Milady's lodge to be pulled down because the General Commanding the Artillery Brigade in Malta felt that it was in the line of fire from the Batteries on the ramparts of Valletta in the event of a hostile invasion.