Houses and Streets

AT101
Enclosed orchard ad communal laundry (Hort Street)

Enclosed orchard

The existence of the Acequia Menor (Small Irrigation Canal) next to the town, allowed the existence of the closed orchards, to put the crops of greater economic value (mainly mulberry trees). It has been documented several, but this is the only one left in the urban area. Known as Uncle Vicent’s Garden, after Vicente Salt Tomás, a wealthy owner (1859-1939)

Laundry

There are two types of laundry, one is a purpose building, a construction that takes advantage of the water from the Murta fountain. The other, of which there were several, were prepared on the walls of the irrigation canal, lowering the cashier of the same and forming a “beach”. The first indirect news referring the building of the laundry are from 1613, when the attorney of Torres Torres complained about the dirtiness of the canal, in part, because the women washed their clothes in it: “la muller … estada vista llavar en aquella tota manera de draps” (Wemen were seen to wash all kind of clothes).

Both in the Acequia Grande (Big Canal) and in the “Sequieta” (littel canal) there were washers on their walls. The latter were within the urban area. They all respond to the same typology, a rectangular space lowered in the cashier of the ditch, made with large slabs of red sandstone.