Portal de Lorca
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It is a project that involves an investment of close to 600,000 euros, and that will allow Lorca to recover an authentic heritage jewel.
The interior of the temple will recreate the original virtually, foreseeing the end of the works during the next summer.
The Mayor of Lorca, Fulgencio Gil, together with the Councilor for Culture, Agustín Llamas, supervised this morning the evolution of the restoration and recovery works of the church of San Pedro.
It is a project that is requiring a tremendous precision of a technical nature, since we are talking about rebuilding a building that had lost 70% of its original elements and structures.
The works executed to date have required a detailed archaeological excavation, with a very careful exercise of documentation and classification of pieces.
Today, it is intervening in the consolidation of the walls, proceeding to the stitching of the existing cracks, which are being filled with mortar and limewater to grant greater security to the original construction.
The Mayor explained that the most important challenge of this project is determined by the recovery of the only preserved arched vault, including the access dome.
It is a 50% demolished by the effects of the 2011 earthquake, which has already been able to raise the main pillar of stone and its corresponding capital.
This intervention is being possible thanks to the special sensitivity shown by the Regional Government of Fernando López Miras, which fully finances this work.
Fulgencio Gil has detailed that the consolidation work is based on the implementation of a perimeter belt on which will settle a protective metal structure for the preservation of the original elements and their correct differentiation from the modern intervention.
This belt allows you to "sew" the property and grant it security and stability, while the protection cover will include a slab to validate the consolidation works.
The project that is being carried out, which involves an investment of almost 600,000 euros, will allow the interior of the temple to virtually recreate the original, foreseeing the completion of the works during the next summer.
The First Edil has indicated that the intervention proposes to consolidate and enhance the existing with new matter, reserving the stone for the original elements.
From there, lighter materials complete the enclosures levitating over the ruin, resting on it with respect, ordering and drawing again the contours of that space that formed arches and vaults.
From an overlapping metallic structure the planes that define the new space that reminds us of the original remain suspended.
Straight and white planes for walls and curves for arches, vaults and lunettes.
A scenographic and conceptual exercise that takes us away from the false history and allows us to discern the real from the imaginary.
It is ultimately about recovering the body of the building.
That its volume and its outline take over that framework of which it was a leading figure in the urban planning of the city.
The Church of San Pedro is located in the foothills of the Castle of Lorca, in the western part.
The documentation dates back to its existence in the 15th century, although, as is usual in the patrimonial elements of this municipality, over the centuries the renovations that have been carried out have been incorporating the typology of each historical moment.
The church was fitted on its original floor to a single nave with attached chapels on the sides, had a single door and next to it rose the tower.
The damages that were caused in the temple because of looting prior to the civil war were so great that it almost disappeared in its entirety, leaving only its tower, parts of the nave and the access door.
It is part of the so-called high parishes, along with Santa María and San Juan Bautista.
It has transcended that its roof was painted in 1477 and lasted until 1936, despite being hidden by a brick and plaster vault executed in 1765. This vault was made of wood, faithful in its design to the Mudejar style called par and knuckle, it rested on stone arches transverse to the axis of the only nave of the temple.
Even being of angular section, and remembering buildings and levantinos, it offered the peculiarity that the angle that in other roofs of its type formed the slopes, was here cut by a horizontal part.
This combination originated three planes, the central one that ran on the keys of the arcs and the two lateral ones that formed the decline proper.
Its pictorial decoration, executed in tempera and attributed to a certain Master Alonso, focused on "lines, ribbons and dentellons in beams and timbers, faces of monsters in the horns of the shoes and flowers and stencilled lobes (patterned drawings passing a brush through an iron on which they will be cut) on the boards, all on a blue, ocher or red background "
The parish of San Pedro basically maintained the initial architectural structure and physiognomy of the 15th century.
In fact, even after the changes experienced in the second half of the 18th century that mark a moment of great prosperity for this church, some of its original elements remained intact, jumping over adaptations and styles, such as the chapel with its vault of crucería and the cover with its decoration of pinnacles and cardinas tributarios of the flamboyant Gothic
A temple with a lot of history
The situation of the Church of San Pedro prior to the earthquake of May 2011 was already quite precarious, but the earthquake contributed decisively to worsen the situation.
The access door, and the tower were cracked almost entirely.
The vault was partially demolished, its rubble falling inside the Church.
Numerous large cracks and fissures also appeared in the stones of the entrance door and in practically the whole tower.
Initially as an emergency measure, metal reinforcements were established in the tower and the remaining areas were propped up and secured to avoid the risk of partial collapse.
The most important thing at that time was to preserve the remaining parts of the original building.
Thus, the efforts were directed, once this part was preserved, to rebuild the rest of the building keeping the lines and spaces, but using contemporary materials.
The tower has a slightly rectangular floor plan with approximate dimensions of 5 meters by 4 meters.
The height is 19.50 meters to the top of its battlements.
Built of stone, it has three differentiated bodies, the first one, higher, solid, in which a single hole is opened for access to the interior of the tower, entry that is made at high altitude, so there must be a staircase that does not is preserved.
On this first body there is a second where four arched openings are practiced, one on each side of the tower.
Finally the crenellated auction, which gives it a medieval tower appearance.
The three bodies are divided by an impost and stone cornice.
The corners are also resolved with ashlar of better invoice than the rest of the stone material that fills the walls.
The windows are also made of ashlar stone up to the voussoirs of the arches.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Lorca
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