LAGALAG: OSLOB HERITAGE PARK, CEBU

Thursday, October 5, 2017

OSLOB HERITAGE PARK, CEBU

Oslob is a 4th municipal income class municipality in the province of Cebu, Philippines.

-----THE BALUATE----

The Baluarte (Spanish for watchtower) of Oslob was built in 1788. Its main purpose was to provide a safe place wherein guards could observe the surrounding area. It was a part of the defense system in dispelling the Moro raiders of the past, which included 6 other watchtowers along the coastline of Oslob. Just near the cuartel, are the ruins of an ancient watchtower. So effective was this system that in 1815, the townspeople of Oslob were able to repel one such attack and remain at peace ever since. This prompted them to relocate the town to its present site from their fortified settlement in Daanglungsod, which is now in ruins but still breathtaking.

---CHURCH OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION-----

Oslob was established as a visita of Boljoon in 1690 and became an independent parish in 1848 with the Immaculate Conception as its patroness. The present-day church of cut coral stone was started in 1830 and finished 18 years later. The buttresses that were added between 1848 and 1850. The adjacent bell tower was built in 1858. The church was burned down during the Second World War liberating Philippine Commonwealth troops and Cebuano guerillas against the Japanese in Oslob in 1945, and 1955 but was eventually restored.

Outside the walls are the remains of a watchtower, one of the many that line the southeastern coast of the Cebu.The church is connected to the parish house or convento that still has its original clay-tiled roof. Across the road from the church is the former mortuary chapel with a pediment decorated with a relief of a human skeleton. North of the complex is a small road that leads to the old cemetery. In 2008, a fire gutted the 19th-century church's interior, including the altar and adjacent rectory, but it spared the image of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, which is inside a glass case, and the 73 other icons near the door to the bell tower.

----THE CUARTEL----

Located front right of the church of Oslob, just outside the perimeter stone fence and near the sea, at the intersection of Calle Aeternidad and the end of Calle Aragones, stands an unfinished building made of coral blocks resembling a Spanish-era barracks. This was intended to be the cuartel, barracks for Spanish soldiers or guardia civil. It was started about 1860, but remained unfinished at the end of Spanish occupation in 1898.