Settlement and the town charter
Settlers were farming the slopes of Calheta around 1430, barely a decade after Portuguese navigators reached Madeira. The island’s first captain, João Gonçalves Zarco, granted these lands to his son João Gonçalves da Câmara and his daughter Beatriz Gonçalves, and noble families followed. Place names such as Lombo do Doutor and Lombo do Atouguia still recall them.
Water from the mountains and sunny, sheltered slopes were ideal for sugar cane. On 1 July 1502 King Manuel I granted Calheta a charter (foral) and made it a vila, one of the earliest municipalities on the island. Tradition says the king also gave the mother church its ebony tabernacle inlaid with silver, still on show in the Igreja do Espírito Santo.
White gold
Around 1500 Madeira was one of the world’s leading sugar producers, and Calheta was among its richest cane areas. Sugar money paid for chapels and churches that survive today: the Manueline Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Loreto in Arco da Calheta (about 1510), the church of São Brás (about 1520), and the Chapel of the Magi in Estreito da Calheta (1520s) with its Flemish altarpiece. In 1535 the town founded its Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a charity that took over a hospital opened in 1505; its building is now the town hall.
Later in the century cheaper sugar from Brazil undercut Madeira’s, and growers turned increasingly to vines. New parishes were formed as the population spread west: Fajã da Ovelha around 1518–1520, Paul do Mar by 1676, Jardim do Mar in 1734 and Prazeres, separated from Estreito, in 1733.
Churches rebuilt
The mother church was rebuilt in 1639. In the 18th century most parishes rebuilt their churches in the forms you see now: São Brás in Arco (1744–1754, blessed on 1 January 1755), Prazeres (begun 1751), São João Baptista in Fajã da Ovelha (second half of the century) and Nossa Senhora da Graça in Estreito (façade dated 1791, blessed 1793). The Casa das Mudas manor dates from 1759. Visit them village by village in the eight parishes.
Steam, sugar and butter
A second sugar boom came with steam. The first Count of Calçada built a steam mill for sugar and spirit in Arco da Calheta in 1857; an ox-driven mill followed in 1883. In 1894 Vicente Lopes opened a water-powered mill in Calheta town, which took a steam engine around 1901 as Lopes & Duarte and, in 1954, became the Sociedade dos Engenhos da Calheta. It still grinds cane today (the Engenho). Jardim do Mar had its own mill from 1900, and António Rodrigues Brás opened another in Calheta in 1908.
Dairy farming fed two butter factories: one in Fajã da Ovelha, whose “Águia” butter was exported before the First World War and which sent its butter down a cable to Paul do Mar, and one in Estreito da Calheta (1910–1969). In Paul do Mar a tuna cannery opened in 1913 with an Italian partner. The municipality also made fireworks and salt and kept bees, and the farms grew bananas, vines and vegetables.
The lighthouse, the roads and the people who left
The Ponta do Pargo lighthouse was designed in 1911 and built between 1912 and 1915, but the First World War held up its lantern until 1921. It was first lit in June 1922, ran on oil with a range of 28 nautical miles, reached 34 miles with incandescent light in 1937, was electrified in 1958 and automated in 1989.
King Carlos I and Queen Amélie passed through Calheta on their way to Rabaçal. José Vicente de Freitas, born in Calheta in 1869, became Prime Minister of Portugal in 1928. Like much of Madeira, Calheta lost many young people to emigration in the 20th century, and some parishes are still shrinking: Paul do Mar went from 871 residents in 2011 to 635 in 2021.
Fast roads and tunnels later brought Funchal within about half an hour, and in the 2000s the town gained its marina, its sand beach and the MUDAS art centre, which opened in October 2004. Calheta’s day is 24 June, also the feast of St John, and its patron is the Holy Spirit.
Calheta in dates
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1430 | Settlers farm the slopes of Calheta |
| 1502 | 1 July: King Manuel I makes Calheta a town |
| c. 1510 | Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Loreto built in Arco da Calheta |
| 1520s | Chapel of the Magi founded in Estreito da Calheta |
| 1535 | Santa Casa da Misericórdia founded |
| 1639 | Mother church rebuilt |
| 1734 | Jardim do Mar becomes a parish |
| 1755 | São Brás church in Arco blessed on 1 January |
| 1857 | Steam sugar mill in Arco da Calheta |
| 1894 | The mill that became the Engenho da Calheta opens |
| 1913 | Tuna cannery opens in Paul do Mar |
| 1922 | Ponta do Pargo lighthouse first lit |
| 1954 | Sociedade dos Engenhos da Calheta formed |
| 2004 | MUDAS arts centre opens |
| 2023 | October wildfire across the municipality |