The genesis of establishing manor farm complexes dates back to the 14th century. Within the historical process, they have been functioning for several hundred years. They were a basis of the Polish agriculture and farming under varying political, social and economic systems. They were arable farms, and constituted uniform and planned layouts. Manor farm complexes consisted of a manor and home farm. The manor was the residence of the proprietor; it was situated within a zone of parks and gardens beautified by small architecture objects. The home farm, owing to its role, gravitated towards a manor complex and arable lands, as well as towards village and markets. The whole spatial system was connected by an internal and external network of roads and paths. After the WW II in 1944, a decree on agricultural reform put an end to the traditional Polish manor farm complexes. A new agricultural economy of the postwar Poland was founded and organized on large land estates, which were all nationalized, i.e. those estates, which covered something between several dozen to several hundred hectares of arable land. Farms that were taken away from landowners had to be newly developed. There were three main development directions. The first ...
The objective of this paper was to make a special set of photographs of the former Polish Eastern Borderlands available to the public. Those photographs belong to a private collection of Mr. Ignacy Rabczuk, As. Prof., M. Sc., Engineer; he took all the photographs in the interwar period. The author of this photo portfolio was a graduate of the Lviv Technical University. He studied from 1927 to 1934 and completed the Faculty of Civil and Water Engineering, Department of Surveying. As a licensed geodesist, he started his professional activity in the Institute of Applied Geophysics of the ”Pionier” Company in Lviv. Then, he was employed with the Treasury Chamber in Brześć on the Bug River, at the beginning as a county, and, then, as a provincial (voivodship) surveyor in the field of soil classification in the Polesie Province. As soon as he accomplished all the tasks appointed to him, the Treasury Chamber sent him to a town called Navahrudak (or Novgorodok or Novogrudok), to the Branch Office of the Chamber. Here, he had the same position. His duties involved supervising land surveying projects, collecting and updating maps, and developing photoplans. By the end of 1938, the Treasury Chamber moved him ...
The objective of his paper is to represent, based on the example of one of the Cracow mounds, those land objects within a spatial structure and Poland’s cultural landscape. Those large engineering earthen structures are artificially raised geometric bodies. The large and high moulds located on ground elevations constitute architectural dominants and are beauty spots, whereas the smaller ones are classified as small structural forms. For the purpose of this paper, the Józef Piłsudski Mound was chosen as an example. It is situated on the Sowiniec Hill in the ‘Wolski Wood’ Park (in Polish ‘Las Wolski’) in Cracow. This object was selected owing to the fact that, recently, Poland celebrated the 90th anniversary of regaining its independence and Mar-shall Józef Piłsudski rendered considerable service to the independence fight and had strong ties with Cracow. This Mound having three names: The Independence Mound, The Piłsudski Mound, and The Grave of Graves is one of the Cracow four largest earthen monuments. It is also the youngest mould since it was built during the inter-war period in the twentieth century. The Mound is an architectural object. Thus, prior to beginning with the building works, a detailed design was developed. One of ...
Pierzchnica village is situated in the Kielce county. It lies east of No.73 road within the Kielce-Chmielnik-Busko Zdrój section. At present it is a local ad-ministrative unit with rural municipality status. The locality lost its town rights and was degraded to the village status, but still retained the features testifying its character of a small town. The paper describes the storage zone called the Cellar Mountain. A complex of over eighty century cellars is situated in this area. These identical objects were constructed successively with growing number of the town inhabitants. Customarily one cellar fell to each of the property owners. The owners and users of this unique, ancient cellar complex which has been preserved to this day, are the inhabitants of Pierzchnica village. Some of the preserved objects are still used for storage, the other are going to ruin. ...
