Machico customs house

Like the customs houses of Funchal and Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’), it was created by the royal decree (alvará régio) of 15 March 1477. We have already noted that although this customs house was located at the seat of the captaincy, it had less traffic and less importance than that of Santa Cruz, perhaps because more sugar was produced in Santa Cruz and the neighbouring settlements than in Machico.

We do not know when it began to operate, and we have found few references to the number of its staff. In 1486 the Machico customs house was again ordered to operate, either because it had not yet been set up or because the collection of the duties levied there had been interrupted. We do know, however, that it had a judge, the first to hold this office being António Alves Uzadamar, in 1557, and the posts of almoxarife (royal revenue officer and storekeeper) and harbour bailiff (alcaide de mar), created in 1550.

Even after it was abolished, the remains of the building that had housed it survived for many years in the town (vila) of Machico. Until very recently a stretch of wall, blackened by time, could still be seen in Rua da Árvore. A small pointed doorway opened in it, already half buried because the bed of the adjoining street had been raised. It was the only remaining trace of the old customs house and also the only example there of Manueline architecture, which has been disappearing throughout the island. These ruins ought to have been preserved with reverent care. The municipality of Machico either would not or could not preserve them, and in 1916 it allowed the demolition hammer to bring them vandalously to the ground. They formed an eloquent commemorative pillar (padrão) of the former prosperity of the town and captaincy of Machico, and no cultivated visitor who went there would fail to look with devoted interest at that strip of black wall and at the small pointed doorway that opened in it, in the reddish pedra mole (‘soft stone’: soft yellowish tuff and its soil) of the old Madeiran buildings.