| Beautiful and
Abandoned Places Sambuco by Mike Eldridge |
This
is the story about a house called Sambuco. Now this word in local Italian
dialect means ‘Elder tree’ and that being one of the possible origins
of my family name gives a first clue to the immediate fascination I first
experienced when I discovered her over a year ago, beautiful and abandoned
on the edge of the Sibylline National park.
The house itself was built some five to six hundred years ago originally as a convent, probably in tower form, by the monks or nuns (we know not which) who tended the Abbey of San Ippolito on the hill beyond and above the house. It commands a sweeping view across the Valley to the mountains of the Sibylline Range and to the little town of Sarnano to the North west. Strategically this vantage point would have served the purpose of spotting any marauding armies or groups of suspicious people in times when this area was in a cul de sac politically and geographically in this region of Le Marche between the mountains and the sea. Indeed it was a time of legend and dark happenings. Witchcraft and necromancy in conflict with the Church in Rome ( this area was at the time under the control of the Papal State) and everywhere, even now, one comes across shrines and grottoes where poor priests would single handedly have battled with the forces of evil (their choice), and stories abound of chivalrous knights on their way no doubt, to or back from Jerusalem or Rome, drawn to the area for a bit of medieval fun with heroic escapades against wizards, dragons and holy grails. All this in a time when the sacred was real, a source of real power, and nothing could exist, from a river to a thunder clap, without a god or devil to cause it. This little story then will document the reconstruction of Sambuco in words and pictures and here to start the process are a few pics of Sambuco in its most abandoned state in 1997.
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