Wilczyska Castle: An Early-Modern Fortified Residence in Poland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Wilczyska Castle is an early-modern fortified residence in Wilczyska, Poland, whose surviving remains belong to a former estate shaped by the Ciołek and Gostomski families. Wilczyska emerged as a settlement at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and, in the sixteenth century, belonged to the Land of Stężyca in the Sandomierz Voivodeship of Lesser Poland.
The Ciołek estate
During the Middle Ages, Wilczyska formed part of an estate centered on the castle at Żelechów. The estate belonged to the Ciołek family, a Polish magnate family with regional possessions. After Andrzej Ciołek of Żelechów died in 1458, a division of his property assigned Wilczyska to his son Andrzej. A record from 1499 names Andrzej’s brother Stanisław of Wilczyska, suggesting that a residential seat may already have existed in the settlement. In 1505, Jan Ciołek was identified as the heir of Wilczyska.
The Gostomski residence
Probably between 1576 and 1595, the Wilczyska estate passed to Anselm Gostomski, Voivode of Rawa, or to his son Stanisław Gostomski. A voivode was a senior territorial governor in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One of them probably began building the early-modern castle whose remains survive, replacing or developing the earlier Ciołek residence.
Stanisław Gostomski died without children in 1598, and Wilczyska passed to his brother Hieronim Gostomski, Voivode of Poznań and Starosta of Sandomierz. A starosta administered a royal district or office. Hieronim probably enlarged the castle to its most impressive phase. After his death in 1609, the estate went to his son Jan Gostomski of Leżenice, who later became Voivode of Inowrocław and Kalisz.
From 9 to 11 April 1617, Jan Gostomski received King Sigismund III Vasa and Queen Constance of Austria at the castle. They were accompanying their son, Crown Prince Władysław Vasa, on a campaign to Moscow. Sigismund III ruled Poland and Lithuania from 1587 to 1632, while Władysław later succeeded him as King Władysław IV. In the 1630s, the writer Szymon Starowolski described the Gostomski stronghold as the most beautiful fortress in the Land of Stężyca.
Inheritance, destruction, and investigation
After Jan Gostomski died in 1623, the castle passed to his underage son, Franciszek Hieronim Gostomski. His legal guardians included his uncle Zygmunt Gostomski, who leased the estate, including Wilczyska, from him in 1627. After Franciszek Hieronim’s death, his widow Marianna Gembicka retained the Wilczyska and Pawłowice estates through a lifetime lease. She married Jan Odrzywolski, Castellan of Czernihów, in 1647, and Zbigniew Ossoliński, Voivode of Podlasie, in 1653. A castellan was a high-ranking official traditionally connected with a castle and its district.
The later history of the castle is uncertain. It was probably destroyed during the Swedish Deluge, the Swedish invasion and occupation of much of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Second Northern War, conventionally dated in Poland to 1655–1660. The circumstances of its destruction are not known. Later use cannot be excluded, since Marianna Gembicka Ossolińska, Voivode of Podlasie and Starosta of Drohiczyn, stayed at the local church in 1663, 1666, and 1668.
Wilczyska Castle was entered on the register of protected monuments under designation A/663 on 17 January 1973. The site is now owned by the Łuków Forest District. Ground-penetrating radar, a non-invasive method that uses radar pulses to detect buried structures and changes underground, was used there in April 2019 by Robert Ryndziewicz and Wojciech Bis. Several days of archaeological work followed at the present courtyard entrance in November 2020, directed by Mieczysław Bienia of Biała Podlaska for the Lublin Voivodeship Office for the Protection of Monuments.
Remains
Fortified enclosure
Castle layout
The surviving castle complex occupies an approximately rectangular area about 152 by 120 metres. At its center is an open courtyard measuring about 80 by 50 metres, with an area of approximately 4,000 square metres. Buildings probably stood along the western and northern ramparts. The eastern corners may have carried artillery bastions, projecting fortifications designed to accommodate firearms and provide defensive fire along the adjoining walls. Each bastion was probably about 10 metres in diameter.
Main moat
The castle is enclosed by a moat between 8 and 20 metres wide and up to 2 metres deep. Its sides were paved with stones. A western moat also once existed, but it was filled during the construction of the road leading to the new manor house.
Outer defenses
Beyond the main moat are remains of earthen fortifications with stone foundations. A second moat, 14 to 16 metres wide, lies farther out and is separated from the first by an earthen rampart between 11 and 25 metres wide. A curtain wall, meaning a defensive wall linking towers or bastions, ran along the outer side of this rampart. Built from glacial boulders and brick, it survives most clearly on the southern and western sides. Remains of the curtain wall were still visible on the southern side in 1949.
Archaeological finds
Weapons from the moats
Clearance work in the moats during the late nineteenth century produced guns and other weapon components. One of the guns was still held by the Wilczyska Production Cooperative in the 1980s. These finds add material evidence of the castle’s defensive equipment.
Renaissance balusters
Renaissance double-bulb balusters from a balustrade were found within the castle grounds. Made of red limestone and dated to the second half of the sixteenth century, they preserve evidence of the residence’s architectural decoration during the period when the Gostomski castle was being established.
