Enhancement of the Torre de la Cabrilla

Juanca Lagares

Enhancement of the Torre de la Cabrilla, Posadas. Cordoba

• Architects

Enhancement of the Torre de la Cabrilla, Posadas. Cordova Watchtower with a practically square floor plan, measuring 6.70 x 7.32 metres, its longest side corresponding to the door, facing south; It consists of two floors and a roof terrace. Built with courses of masonry and at intervals of stone slabs, the buttresses being made up of rope and blight ashlars. In the four facades it has cruciform engravings. We are at a geostrategic point of relevance for the control of the area and we pass through the royal road, a high place from where we could see the fords by the Guadazuheros, La Vega and Guadalbaida streams and the existing ford in the Guadalquivir at this point. , only passage through the river on foot.

photo_credit Juanca Lagares — Juanca Lagares

The importance of the place and the need for control made some hermits offer to live in it, providing them with a road control service, lookout for possible enemy military incursions and religious services for pilgrims, transcendental in border towns or, as in the case of Posadas, towns standing on the route of the main roads and communication routes between the big cities. The interior of the Tower is accessed through a basket-handle arch door with stone voussoirs, protected by an ashlar that rests on ashlar jambs embedded in the wall without protruding from the façade, but with projections into the corridor so that the door rests on the highlight. There are some cashiers in the middle of the door for the lodging of the lock. Attached to the eastern wall there was a staircase with a brick barrel vault ceiling, except for the angle, where there is a hole to go to the upper floor.

In the center of each façade on the 2nd floor there is an elongated window, loophole or embrasure, with jambs and a ashlar lintel. An eave emerges from the roof, as a molding where the parapet begins. It is topped with pyramidal cap battlements. In the upper part of the south façade there is a machicolation supported by four carved corbels, through which projectiles could be thrown to defend the door. It was possibly built in 1320 during the reign of Alfonso XI. Our project consists of the enhancement of the Tower, through various landscaping actions around it and minimal intervention in the Watchtower so that it can be visited.

The first action will be the cleaning of the private access road with sack bottom. At this entrance to the road, a fenced access gate will be installed to limit access to the tower. The second action will be to perimeter a security area around the tower, Both to prevent acts of vandalism on the BIC, assuring future visitors of possible falls from the steep slope towards the existing railway service path just 3 meters from the South facade of the Tower. Along this entire perimeter, Mediterranean aromatic species such as rosemary, thyme, lavender-cantueso, santolina, cinnamon laurel, borage, etc. will be planted. In addition to carob trees. Delimiting that space at the same time that they will be excellent natural shade elements for the summer. The current access door to the tower, installed by the property in the 1980s, will be reinforced and painted, placing a vandal-proof lock on it.

The base of the machicolation presents a filling made by the property in the year '85 to cover the 3 defensive holes between corbels, for pouring boiling oil, arrows, stones or any other object in order to protect the access door to the tower. On the roof, the contemporary flooring of solid brick pieces will be cleared and cleaned, replacing those pieces that are missing or loose. And once the surface is clean and secured, a waterproof transparent liquid membrane will be applied on it to waterproof the skirt that pours over the north face of the tower through a duct-sink to which we will place a gargoyle or gutter.

We highlight in the intervention in the Tower the proposal of the reproduction of the battlements/merlons by means of a support structure of corten steel, obtaining a forceful vision of the figure of the Atalaya in the landscape.