Founded 1906
Archaeology Report Spring 2017
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Selected Articles from the BHAS Bi-Annual magazine "Flint" Spring 2017
Treasures of Villajoyosa Many years ago my late husband and I found a lovely small town on the coast just north of Alicante for our annual winter holiday. Villajoyosa is a typical Spanish town (pop. 20,000), undiscovered by foreign tourists - what we didn't know then was that its origins were in prehistory. We spent many happy winter breaks there until Steve died unexpectedly in 2006 and I had to return there to deal with our wills. The only bright note was that the municipal baths had been found and the archae-ologists kindly gave me a tour of the site when I told them that I was a member of BHAS. I later learned that emperor Vespa-sian had made Allon (Villajoyosa's Roman name) a municipi-um in 74 AD, hence the baths. I felt too sad to return until April 2012, when I made a new will leaving my Spanish estate to Vilamuseu as a thank you for the years of happiness we'd enjoyed. By amazing good fortune my visit coincided with the inaugural festival, "Festum Alonis", celebrating Villajoyosa's Roman heritage, now held every April. A new museum was under construction but the financial situation in Spain was dire, and I officially became a volunteer and patron of the Museum in November 2012 at a ceremony in the Town Hall council chamber, helping with translation, promotion and funding small projects known as the Steve Evans Project. Sometimes Steve and I had walked along the clifftop to Camp-ing Hercules. Two old houses were surrounded by a garden which contained some large blocks of stone. I would lovingly touch the stone and say to Steve, "I'm sure these are Roman." Later the Council bought the campsite. An eminent archaeol-ogist was convinced that the 19th century houses concealed a Roman monument, and a lengthy excavation revealed a won-derful funerary monument from the 2nd century AD, La Torre de Sant Josep. Only one of the capitals remained, so I spon-sored three matching capitals in 2015, and the stonemason carved my name inside one of them. It is the largest funerary monument in Spain and has already won an award for the quality of its restoration. It has been a dream come true to help restore a Roman monument. Gardens, security fence, benches, LED lighting at night and CCTV cameras have completed the project and, last year in a ceremony at the Tower the gardens were officially named "los jardines de Elaine Evans" in recognition of my support. Last November I was present at the official opening of the Museum by the Re-gional President, five special years since I became involved. Wonderful to see the "treasures of Villa-joyosa" finally on view in their home town. The public baths first excavated in 2005 had had to be covered up to pro-tect them, as there were no funds to open them to the public, but exciting-ly they are the next project to be developed - onwards and upwards! (photo: Elaine Evans)
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