Fort Verdala was built by the
Royal Engineers between 1852 and 1856. It was built on the central part of the
Santa Margherita Lines, incorporating St. Margherita Bastion and St.Helen Bastion. The fort was named after the Verdala Curtain, the
curtain wall linking the two bastions. The fort itself consists of a barrack block surrounded by
casemated walls, which are surrounded by a shallow ditch. By 1886, the fort was armed with 24-pounder smooth-bore
howitzers. These armaments were removed in the 1890s, when the fort was converted into a barrack complex. In
World War I, it became a prisoner-of-war camp, housing captured German prisoners including
Franz Joseph, Prince of Hohenzollern-Emden,
Karl von Müller and
Karl Dönitz.
Mahmud Hasan Deobandi, an Indian Muslim activist, was interned here after the unsuccessful
Silk Letter Movement against the
British Raj. In the interwar period, Fort Verdala housed the
Royal Marines, before being converted into a naval store. In 1940, it was commissioned as a
stone frigate with the name HMS
Euroclydon, and was used as a school for children of
Royal Navy personnel. The school was closed in 1943 due to the threat of
aerial bombardment, and the fort became a POW camp once again. In 1945 it briefly served as a demobilisation centre, but was converted back into a naval school in 1947, housing only primary age children of Royal Navy personnel from the 1950s.Although it was a school, the fort continued to house navy personnel and Maltese servicemen, and occasionally members of other Commonwealth navies such as the
Royal Pakistan Navy. The fort was decommissioned and handed to the
Government of Malta in 1977. It was then used by the
Verdala International School, which moved to
Fort Pembroke,
St. Andrew's in 1987. The fort then became a
state school, first as Verdala Boys’ Secondary school, and later the
co-educational St Margaret College Secondary School, Verdala. ==References==