26 members and friends took part in this trip by coach that was inspired by presentations given at our January 2024 Annual Lunch. These were a talk by the architect Gonçalo Byrne, whose father was a manager of the Urgeiriça uranium mine, together with a film presented about the mine by Ramsay Cameron, the son of the last manager.
On the way to Urgeiriça we stopped at Belmonte to investigate the town’s interesting Jewish history. While many Jews left Portugal during the Inquisition, often to cities with which they had trading connections, such as Hamburg, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, those in Belmonte did not emigrate but went underground, practising their faith in a strict, secret, isolated community. Known as the Marranos, dozens of descendants have survived until today in Belmonte and neighbouring areas as the result of intermarrying and having few cultural contacts with the outside world. Only in the last century have they re-established contact with the international Jewish community and they now openly practise their religion in a public synagogue with a formal rabbi. After a good lunch at the Taberna Fio de Azeite, we visited the Jewish Quarter, the Synagogue, and the Jewish Museum.
We were well received at the Hotel Urgeiriça There we met up with Gonçalo Byrne and Marcus Harbord, grandson of the founder of the hotel and manager of the mine, Charles Harbord. (They are pictured above together with Snr. Aires, Vereador da Câmara). The mine initially only produced radium, which was sent to Marie Curie in Paris. Its profitability suffered from competition from a mine in the then Belgian Congo but the development of the atomic bomb changed everything. The United States purchased 20 tons of uranium from Urgeiriça, not long before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, although the source of the uranium for those bombs was the Congo. In July 1949, 100% of the mine was purchased by the British government to provide the uranium for the nuclear weapons manufactured during the Cold War. In August 1952, the British Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, and Winston Churchill’s niece Clarissa Churchill spent their honeymoon at the hotel. Not a traditional honeymoon, Eden spent much of his time negotiating with the Portuguese government.
.JPG)
The next day we visited the mine, which is still undergoing decontamination. Many of the buildings had been constructed with contaminated sand. Until 1948 there were only 40 miners extracting radium, but this rose to 1200 working in 62 mines in 1980, with the demand for uranium. All the uranium was processed in Urgeiriça, with the processing facility continuing to operate until 2001. Miners died at a young age, mainly from silicosis. They retired early. Only in the 1950s was a regime instituted that required them to shower and undergo three minutes of infrared exposure and change their clothes after a 6-hour shift.
.JPG)
After lunch at the hotel, we travelled to Gouveia and visited the Espaço Arte e Memória and Casa Judaica. The Jewish community played an important role in the development of the town in the Medieval period, especially with the wool trade. There were always around 40 Jews, but this increased to 200 after the Spanish Inquisition. Discovered in the late 1960s, the Casa da Vivência Judaica has on display the original granite lintel with a Hebrew inscription from the old synagogue, which is known to have been the last synagogue to be built in Portugal before the mandatory conversion of Jews to Christianity and later expulsion of the Jewish community in 1496. A similar stone with same inscription has been found on the Temple Mount. Jews don’t mention the word “God” but on the inscription the word appears four times. The sculptor was persecuted and the Inquisition ordered the inscription to be destroyed. It was found when the new Correios was being built in 1967. The family in the house that was to be demolished to make way for the new post office had been hiding it for 400 years.
Gouveia castle was blown up by the French under Reynier in 19-21 March 1811. Wellington arrived on 22 March. A factory and houses built in 1847 used stone from the castle. Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Collins (Colonel of the Portuguese Army), died in 1813 in the Jesuit College (which was a military hospital), which is now the Paços do Concelho town hall. As he was a Protestant, he was buried far from the building, close to the exterior wall. In 1910 a monument existed in granite, although the inscription had almost disappeared. It read “Sacred to the memory of Colonel Richard Collins of his Britannic Majesty's 83 Regiment, died in the service of his country on the 13 of Feb. 1813. This inscription is entrusted to be added to the tribute of esteem offered by his brother officers in the erection of this monument, by a friend who knew perfectly his virtues.” We saw a fragment of the headstone, with the symbol of the Ordem da Torre da Espada, on display on the wall of the Espaço Arte e Memória museum. A man called Tavares Correia had been responsible for saving two 2.20m. columns and the Torre Espada symbol. We also saw the Town Hall, which has an interesting history as at one time the top floor was used as a prison by orders of Queen D. Maria ll.
On the way back to Lisbon, we stopped off in Carregal do Sal, birthplace of Aristides de Sousa Mendes and now home to the museum that bears his name. Sousa Mendes defied the orders of Salazar by issuing visas and passports to refugees in Bordeaux fleeing Nazi Germany, including Jews. The number of visas he issued in 1940 is disputed, but it is thought that he saved 30,000 refugees, of which 10,000 were Jews. The Casa do Passal, affectionately known by the local population as Casa do Doutor Aristides, was the family home, given to him and his wife Angelina by her father. It became a stopping point for countless refugees welcomed during their journey to escape the Holocaust. The 19th-century property, expanded in the first decades of the 20th century, was classified as a National Monument in 2011. It opened as a Casa Museu in 2024. Because of his treatment by the Estado Novo, Sousa Mendes experienced financial difficulties. He had to sell all the house’s contents to pay for food: the artefacts on display have been donated by people from the town whose families bought them. We also visited the family tomb, where Sousa Mendes is buried next to two of his children.
.JPG)
A final stop before our return home was at the Roman ruins of Conímbriga, just south of Coimbra, where we also had lunch. Conímbriga is one of the largest Roman settlements excavated in Portugal, and was classified as a National Monument in 1910. It was a walled urban settlement, encircled by stone structures approximately 1,500 metres long. The site comprises various structures, including a forum, basilica and commercial shops, thermal spas, aqueducts, homes of various types (including interior patios) and larger villas (such as the Casa dos Repuxos and Casa de Cantaber), in addition to a paleo-Christian Basilica.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
BHSP BROCHURE