Fajã dos Padres
A small fajã beyond Cabo Girão, once owned by the Jesuits and famed for producing the island's best Malmsey wine.
This small fajã (strip of flat land at the foot of a cliff) lies on the south coast of Madeira, a little beyond Cabo Girão. At its back rises a great bare, barren cliff about 300 metres high. Its population numbers some 50 inhabitants, who are subject in spiritual matters to the church of São Brás (St Blaise) in the parish (freguesia) of Campanário (‘bell tower’).
The Fajã dos Padres (‘the priests’ flat’), which in former times belonged to the priests of the Society of Jesus and where traces remain of a chapel perhaps built at their behest, was the property of Colonel Manuel J. de França Dória. After growing sugar cane on his land without much success, he re-established the cultivation of the vine there, which seems to be the crop best suited to the local soil.
The Fajã dos Padres once produced the best Malmsey wine on the island, and Sercial (white grape variety) and other excellent vine varieties were also grown there.
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Place
Places mentioned · 04- Fajã dos Padres · Subject
Ribeira Brava
Fajã dos Padres is a small coastal fajã beyond Cabo Girão in the parish of Campanário, one of the best-known fajãs of Madeira. It was a Jesuit estate famed for the island's best Malmsey and also for Sercial; its Jesuit chapel was destroyed by Algerian corsairs in 1626. The Elucidário gives the pirate raid as 1625 in one note and 1626 in another.
- Cabo Girão
Câmara de Lobos. Cape just beyond which the fajã lies.
Sheer sea cliff about 600 m high (listed at 589 m) and a recommended viewpoint. Its cliffs contain dykes, and it is one of only two places where C. dissectum grows. A rockfall from it killed Henrique Alemão in his boat.
- Campanário
Ribeira Brava. Parish to which the fajã belongs spiritually.
Campanário is a parish in Madeira, formerly part of Câmara de Lobos and later joined to the municipality of Ribeira Brava, drained by the Ribeira do Campanário (or da Lapa). The Elucidário records its landing, its band, its capitania-mor, its tithes paid to the Jesuits, a former chapel of St John founded in 1728, and the vicar sentenced by the Alçada of 1823. It was also the birthplace of Bishop D. Manuel Joaquim Gonçalves de Andrade and the jurist Francisco Justino Gonçalves de Andrade.
- Church of St Blaise
Ribeira Brava. Parish church serving the fajã's inhabitants.
Parish church serving the fajã's inhabitants.
People
People mentioned · 01-
Colonel who owned the Fajã dos Padres, tried sugar cane and then restored vineyards there.