The Estate

For a long time, the safest thing to do on this coast was to look away from it.

A long, almost blind wall of old golden stone with four tiny high openings and a square tower at its right end, dry grass and two wild olives in front.
The blind outer wall, about 1580 to 1780.

The story

Raiders came by sea. So the people who farmed this plateau built a tower to watch for them, and a house that turned its back: blind walls outside, everything facing a courtyard and a well.

They kept sheep. In the worst of the summer, the flock waited out the heat under a long row of stone vaults. In Mallorcan, a place like that is called a sestador.

The raiders stopped coming long ago. The house kept its habits.

This story is fiction. The Estate doesn’t exist. What this is

A plain square stone tower with a few narrow slits and a small box at one corner, above a low tiled roof and a dry-stone wall, under a clear sky.
The Torre, about 1580.

The Portassa, then the Entrada

One way in, on purpose.

A single gate about 3.6 m wide, then 9 m of dark passage. It compresses the arrival, so the courtyard feels larger than its 24 × 18 m.

A round-headed gateway of long worn stones with one oak door open onto darkness.

Built slowly

  1. About 1580The tower, in the years of the coastal watch.
  2. To about 1780The house, the courtyard, the oil mill, the flock shelter and a very small chapel.
  3. RecentlyThe old buildings repaired with their own stone. One long new wall, 140 m, set back from the cliff.
A long vaulted lounge with stone arches, an old stone olive mill and dark oak press, low linen seating and a small fire.
The Tafona, once the oil mill, now the lounge.

How we repaired it

  • With matching stone, leaving the patina.
  • Nothing rebuilt that’s gone. Missing sections are new stone, set back 3 cm, so you can always tell.
  • Services you can undo, with nothing showing on the old stone.
  • No faux-rustic additions, and no antique tools on walls.

Details

Long worn voussoirs of a gate with visible chisel marks.
Gate voussoirs, by hand.
An open stone stair with a solid parapet climbing a sunlit wall to a small wooden door, with one clay pot of rosemary on a step.
The Clastra’s stair.
A peeling louvered shutter against worn stone.
Shutters, faded and chalky.
Small river pebbles and a worn stone runnel holding a little rainwater.
The Clastra’s floor after rain.
Worn old stone meeting crisp new stone with a thin shadow line between.
New stone, set back 3 cm.

Now see how it works.

See the architectureRooms