How Nuno Vasconcelos, now in his fifties, came to quit his life as a banker to run the Quinta da Alcaidaria-Mór, his family’s historic Portuguese manor house near the Holy Shrine of Fátima, belongs in a Peter Mayle novel. In the 1980s, Mayle tapped into a middle-class escapist fantasy of swapping the rat race to restore a farmhouse with a vineyard in the hills of Provence.
Only in Vasconcelos’s case, the idea wasn’t a fantasy. As the second youngest of seven siblings – he has three sisters and three brothers – his decision to return to the old family home and turn it into a holiday and pilgrim retreat on the road to Fátima was the only way they could keep the house and ancient estate going. “We were never going to sell,” he says. “The important thing is to pass it on to the next generation.”
The historic wine estate used to be owned by the Order of Malta in the Middle Ages. But wine has not been made for years and the huge stone cellars are empty other than housing an old fridge and farm vehicles. The manor is a few kilometres from the historic town of Ourém, reached up a hill where walkers pass the ruins of the Convento de Santo António. From the huge castle ramparts, you can just make out the shrine of Fátima some 23km away. The shrine is a day’s hard walk along the Caminho de Fátima, known as the 111km Carmelita Way.
The manor house came to the Vasconcelos family in the 19th century when a member of the family was made the 1st Baron of Alvaiázere during the reign of King John VI (1816-26). This person was a doctor who once cured the king and was given the estate as a reward. Reportedly, the Portuguese general Nuno Álvares Pereira prayed at the private chapel before fighting in the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385. This battle secured Portuguese independence from Castille. Pope Benedict XVI canonised him in 2009.
This beautiful little medieval chapel, where we sang Lauds, includes an unlikely pair of ballroom chandeliers, a faded photo of St John Paul II on the wall and pictures of the three Fátima shepherd children. May 13 is the feast day of Our Lady of Fátima. This was the date in 1917 when it was reported that the Blessed Mother first appeared to the three children from the rural town of Fátima. She would then appear on the 13th of each month five more times.
A huge barn next to the house has been converted into a communal guest drawing room, with a billiards table, wood-burning fire and a bar stocked with local wine. Unlikely prints of the Quorn hunt in England adorn the walls along with board games (draughts and chess) and glossy magazines from the 1980s. Stuffed foxes (one brother went to Oxford and hunts with several English packs) stand in the entrance hall. The phones are rotary and the Catholic roots of the family are everywhere, from old crucifixes to a sign in the entrance hall proclaiming “Esta casa foi sempre Christa”. A photo of John Paul II stands next to an old LP of Nat King Cole love songs.
The quinta is faded country house grandeur at its most charming. The old leatherbound guest books dating back to 1984 bulge with compliments scrawled in myriad languages, although visitors are now asked to write a Trip Advisor review instead. Arraiolos tapestries hang on the walls along with dusty oil portraits of family members. It has the feel of a family museum rather than a boutique hotel. The swimming pool, I should add, has been repaved and looks swanky – just the thing after a 20km pilgrim slog.
There is also an old wishing well, where one can sit under the shady trees and contemplate the last day’s walk into Fátima, whose controversial apparitions have become the subject of various films, most recently Marco Pontecorvo’s Fátima, starring Harvey Keitel, from 2020. It’s no surprise to learn that the Vasconcelos family played a role in the miracle story; indeed all the family papers relating to their role in the apparitions, leading to Fátima now being one of the most visited pilgrim shrines in the world, have been donated to the Vatican.
As a young boy, Vasconcelos loved the family house which was where he spent his summers. To keep the place going, his parents opened up seven bedrooms to holiday guests and pilgrims in 1984. When his father died, Vasconcelos asked the other family members “if they would like me to take the place over” and run it as a holiday retreat with two cottages attached. Vasconcelos also converted part of the old winery into a wedding venue space, which can be used for spiritual retreats.
Instead of living in the main house, Vasconcelos decided to live next door to free up the seven bedrooms. His wife is available to do the cooking, with meals served on a huge mahogany table in the old family dining room (signs on various chairs and sofas read “Do not sit on me”). “Our cottage is smaller and cosier than the main house,” says Vasconcelos, “and in the winter, it’s more comfortable because a house this size is very difficult to heat.”
“To the quinta born” would not be an inaccurate description of his set-up in a cottage next to the big house. The bedrooms have been restored to a high standard (the Portuguese equivalent of the Colefax and Fowler country look) and gleaming new marble bathrooms installed. “I didn’t feel comfortable working in a bank,” Vasconcelos says of his career change. “I said I would like to leave banking, give company to my mother and take care of the place and continue what my father had done as a host.”
His father was initially reluctant to open the family house to paying guests. But after a few years of retirement, Vasconcelos says his father “began to get bored” and thought having guests around might prove an enjoyable distraction as well as providing useful income. His father’s background had been in high-end Algarve tourism. “Germans swim all year round even when the pool is icy cold,” notes Vasconcelos.
Ourém, the local town, is blessed with several good restaurants, including O Rito, Casa das Costeletas and A Botica. On our night at the latter with the Herald pilgrim band of 12, we enjoyed giant steaks, fried octopus, local reds and sparkling wines. “The Portuguese like to eat and people will drive 60km to come to this restaurant,” says Vasconcelos.
He drives to Fátima most days as his 12-year-old daughter goes to a school there run by priests. Living so close to Fátima means he has heard all the stories (both good and bad) and also knows many of the priests who have very differing accounts of the legend of Fátima.
“There is something in Fátima, there’s a special energy,” Vasconcelos says. “When I get off the road from Lisbon and start to climb the hill to Fátima, you feel the energy. Something happens. But my grandfather didn’t believe in the Fátima legend – or at least not at first.”
Vasconcelos’s grandfather was a prominent lawyer in Fátima. In 1917, he was sceptical about the first apparitions but when the so-called “third miracle” happened, he actually witnessed it. “He was there. He saw it. From this date on he started to believe,” says Vasconcelos.
Indeed, he knew the three Fátima children well. “He would take them out on walks and drive with them in his horse and carriage. When one of the children, Jacinta, fell ill, my grandfather asked her parents if he could take her to hospital in Lisbon to see if she could be cured. Sadly, she died in Lisbon,” says Vasconcelos.
When Jacinta was returned to Fátima, her body was put in a box marked “Fragile”. When she arrived at the train station, his grandfather was there with several priests to meet her. She was then taken to the Vasconcelos family vault where she remained for 15 years. The body was then translated to Fátima cemetery.
“My father was 10 years old and went with my grandfather. In a house nearby that still exists, they opened the box. The body was like she died yesterday, only it was 15 years later. My father saw it,” says Vasconcelos.
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. At this time, the estate had fallen into disrepair and times were hard. “We were going to lose this place, but when Jacinta entered our family mausoleum, things started to go well financially.”
There was a sudden reversal of fortune and the quinta was saved by a miraculous bank loan. Make of that what you will.
For more on Quinta da Alcaidaria-Mór, visit alcaidariamor.com.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.