The rehabilitations and restorations of old buildings can give joys and also headaches. This has been what has happened with the first phase of rehabilitation of the old convent of San Francisco and its belfry in Garachico.
Roque Hernández, architect of the Daute Arquitectura studio (the company in charge of the renovation), is clear that renovations like this are “interesting because you are not working with a new construction project where everything is very clear, but you have to make decisions as the work progresses ”.
The belfry: the priority
The priority of the restoration was the belfry by obvious security reasons. With this element “we have encountered quite a few unforeseen events,” he says. Beyond the pandemic, which delayed the work and has also delayed the arrival of supplies from the Peninsula and the incorporation of workers from the construction company who were in ERTE; when it began to chop “with almost handicraft work, we realized that a good part of the legs of the belfry and the arches where the bells are were hollow,” explains Hernández.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the former Franciscan convent underwent a powerful intervention. In this work, the steeple was intervened by incorporating “very large iron bars and concrete. That produced a deterioration when rusting and also of the concrete that is around causing an increase in volume. That was difficult to solve ”, says the Garachiquense architect. So, it was decided to resort to carbon fiber rings to reinforce the entire upper part.
“It is a construction technology very higha few companies that carry it out here ”, he alludes to carbon fiber banding and assuring that“ in the end it was done without using a single iron. But it was very important for him to be much better in the future ”.
On the other hand, lime was the original material for the construction of the 16th century convent belfry. For this reason, Hernández resorted to “limes that are as natural as possible within what is achieved. Everything was brought from the Peninsula, from some places where They use wood-fired ovens to make lime. We found it interesting because the higher the quality of the material, the more durability for the belfry ”, he says.
As for the wooden balcony, Roque Hernández points out interesting historical details: The first image of the belfry is a drawing by JJ Williams dating from the early nineteenth century and it already showed the wooden balcony. Williams portrayed some landscapes of Tenerife in his accompaniment to the scientists Sabino Berthelot and Philip Barker Webb.
Much more recent (before the restoration of the late twentieth century mentioned above) are the images that are preserved in the municipal archive and in which the balcony is missing. Hernández understands that it is quite likely that the balcony was restored and completed in said intervention. In some photographs from the early twentieth century and the middle of the same, the balcony is there and in others it only appears from behind. “It is seen that in the last restoration it was tried to do as it was originally until it began to collapse a few years ago”, the architect adds.
Right now, all the beams that are visible and the entire balustrade, except the corner pilasters, is the wood that was laid out in the last restoration. The Garachico City Council had dismantled the balcony in June 2015 due to the danger it posed. “We recovered the wood that was removed, cleaned and treated. Part was from tea and part from old riga. Finally, we prepared it because not all dimensions were the same to reassemble it ”, he develops for DAUTE DIGITAL.
But the rehabilitation of the belfry does not stop here. The bells were other elements to take into account for its restoration. To do this, the bell and clock rehabilitation specialist Gregoria Jorge García. Thanks to him, it has been discovered that in all probability “one of the two bells found in the lower arches was cast in the same convent,” asserts Hernández.
According to the ringer specialist, it was recurrent that a mold and a material were brought to the place where the bell should be placed. There he melted and then climbed up to get high. “So this bell must be very old,” adds the architect and continues by saying that thanks to the priest Domingo González, another of the bells that was in the Parish of Santa Ana has been recovered safely.
Discovering doors
The north courtyard and the rear of the old convent of San Francisco, together with providing the building with a rear emergency exit, were also considered in this first phase. The discovery of two doors, one that would connect with the Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles church and another that connects the north patio with the south patio, were two “pleasant surprises”, according to the architect of Daute Arquitectura.
“When we held meetings with the Heritage Technicians of the Tenerife Island Council, they warned us to be vigilant in the union with the church, since it was very normal that in this type of convents there would be some kind of connection,” says Hernández.
So it was: the clues to discover the doors are in the small fissures that are seen in the plastering. They detected a “very large, vertical and straight fissure in the wall adjoining the church. We asked to do a tasting and our surprise was not to discover a door of two or three meters, but a door of almost double, about five meters high “, remember. However, the great surprise for the architect was the wooden lintel that it had and an element that they used as a bar for the door leaf.
The door hole has not been opened again, but the hole has been left behind. “Here we find some rough and concrete partitions that cannot be so old”, he argues, thinking that it would be covered in the restoration of the late s. XX or maybe something earlier.
The other door was also a pleasant surprise for the architect. “On the other three sides of the patio there is always a hole in the middle and we understood that perhaps there could be one in this wall. When it was chopping to fix damp, the workers told me that there were some bricks, ”he says. Major tastings were made of that wall and there was indeed a hole. Also, that hole had been bricked up long in advance because it was bricked up with masonry.
“It is a strange process because it was originally masonry, but it has some preserved brick sides, from some restoration,” he explains.
This first phase that began in October 2019, will end, if there are no unforeseen events, “At the latest this April”Hernández has said. The master plan includes more phases to continue with the rest of the property, but for now there is no more financing. For the Garachiquense architect there is something very important and that is that “the amounts for this type of renovation are large, but for this type of action there is little use for”, he concludes.
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