Bartodzieje Manor Complex: A Historic Estate and Park in Poland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Russian
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page12 sections
History
Bartodzieje Manor Complex is a ruined historic manor estate and park in Bartodzieje, Poland. Its masonry manor was built in the 1830s in the classical style, replacing an earlier wooden building, and the property later passed through a succession of private owners before suffering wartime looting, prolonged neglect, and a devastating fire in 2003. The complex is listed in the heritage register under numbers 750/A, 807/A, and 24/A.
From wooden manor to masonry estate
A wooden manor stood at Bartodzieje in 1826. The Warsaw merchant and investor Wawrzyniec Mikulski bought the village in late 1830 for 73,000 Polish złoty. He took possession in 1832, after the end of Trępczyński’s lease, and began building a masonry manor during the 1830s.
Mikulski sold Bartodzieje to his sister, Joanna Dobrowolska-Rade, in 1835 for 160,000 złoty, then bought it back a year later for the same sum. In 1837 he sold the property to Jan Kuszewski for half that amount. Kuszewski died only a few months after acquiring the estate. His son Ludwik held it until 1842, while rights afterward belonged to Ludwik’s wife, Antonina Kuszewska of the Bilski family, and his mother, Marianna of the Wittchof family. Ludwik’s sister Wiktoria Wereszczyńska and her husband Jakub also claimed rights to the property.
By the middle of the 1840s, Bartodzieje was described as a spacious masonry building, although some of its details were still unfinished. The Kuszewsky family derived considerable income from propination, a landowner’s system for producing and selling alcoholic drinks, with distilleries on the manorial farm using crops grown on the estate.
Inheritance disputes and nineteenth-century owners
A succession dispute between Wiktoria Wereszczyńska and the legal guardians of Emilia Pastuszek, a minor cousin of Antonina Kuszewska, continued until 1844. The court awarded Emilia three-quarters of the estate and Wiktoria the remaining quarter. At Wereszczyńska’s request, the entire property was then offered for public sale. On 14 March 1844, Andrzej Deskur, the owner of the neighbouring Goryń estate, bought Bartodzieje for 16,055 silver rubles.
Deskur became one of the largest landowners in Radom Governorate during the 1850s. A governorate was a major administrative division within the Russian imperial system. In addition to Goryń, he owned Smogorzów, Żabianka, Pająków, two houses in Radom, and estates in Volhynia and Kyiv Governorates. His 1846 will assigned Bartodzieje to his nephew Stanisław Deskur, who took possession in December 1851. Neither Andrzej nor Stanisław lived at Bartodzieje, and both arranged for the estate to be leased.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the original manor was enlarged. A portico was added at the entrance, and a two-storey tower was built on the western side. These changes gave the earlier classical building a more developed architectural form.
In 1861 Karol de Huntley Gordon and his wife Laura, the daughter of Castellan Franciszek Sołtyk, bought the estate for 134,250 silver rubles. A castellan was a high-ranking historical officeholder, and in nineteenth-century Poland the title could also refer to a member of the Senate of the Congress Kingdom of Poland. After Karol Gordon died in 1879, the property passed to Laura and their son Franciszek. They sold Bartodzieje to Zenon Jakacki in November 1883 for an assessed value of 135,000 silver rubles.
Maria Strojnowska, the widow of Feliks, acquired Bartodzieje in 1886 and sold the village in 1897 to Bolesław and Maria Maleszewski. Bolesław Maleszewski died without children on 13 May 1912 and left the estate to the brothers Bolesław and Edmund Janowski. In August of that year, Bolesław Janowski purchased his brother’s share and became the sole owner.
The Janowski estate before and during the Second World War
Under Bolesław Janowski, the estate covered 301 hectares. The family supported itself through the manorial farm, first relying on traditional agriculture and later adding horticulture. Its financial position remained weak, however, and more than half of the land had been sold by 1939. About 50 hectares remained when the German occupation began.
In August 1940, the German authorities expelled the Janowskis from Bartodzieje. After occupying the manor in the autumn, they used it as a recreation centre for Wehrmacht officers. The Wehrmacht was the armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. Bartodzieje became the centre of a latifundium, a very large landed estate with extensive agricultural land and farm buildings, while the estate administration operated outside the manor.
After the collapse of the German eastern front, the manor was converted into a military hospital. The building suffered no major structural damage during the occupation, but its interiors were destroyed and its contents were looted after the German departure and before the new authorities took control.
Postwar use, decline, and fire
The Janowskis returned to Bartodzieje in late 1944. The estate was exempted from agrarian reform because it was already too small for subdivision. A post office and a police post were installed in an outbuilding, and for three years the property also housed a centre for creative work.
Only the manor roof was repaired, since the greenhouse produced little income. The farm later passed to Józef Janowski’s son Tadeusz, who married Anna Hauke in 1980. In 1988 the Janowskis sold the estate to Krystyna Gancarczyk-Hjorth and emigrated to Sweden. Krystyna and her Swedish husband, Stig Hjorth, expanded greenhouse vegetable production and began renovating the manor, but stopped the work after several months.
Hjorth later converted the neighbouring outbuilding into a floor-mosaic factory without authorization and altered other former farm buildings for production. When the greenhouse and mosaic businesses became unprofitable, production ended and the owners moved to Sweden in the mid-1990s. From the late 1980s, the manor was no longer heated, and the buildings and surrounding park steadily deteriorated.
In November 2003, the manor was set on fire. The blaze almost completely destroyed the interiors and roof structure, while the floors collapsed. Only the external walls survived. In 2004, the heritage conservator began proceedings to assess the building’s condition and later ordered the ruins to be secured. The owner did not complete the required work for two years and finally installed a temporary fence in October 2006. The fence was soon stolen, and deterioration continued.
In July 2015, a Radom entrepreneur bought the manor, its two outbuildings, and the park from Stig Hjorth and Krystyna Gancarczyk-Hjorth. The purchase of additional properties that had formerly belonged to the estate increased the holding to 21 hectares. The new owner tidied the park and pond and planned to demolish and rebuild the manor because of its poor technical condition.
Remains
Bartodzieje Manor Complex consists of a classical manor, two outbuildings, a surrounding park, and a pond. The central building began as a masonry manor in the 1830s and was later enlarged with a portico, a projecting entrance structure, and a two-storey western tower. Estate gardens and greenhouses stood near the farm buildings, linking the residential part of the complex with agricultural and horticultural production.
Manor building
Classical manor
The main manor is a masonry classical building begun during the 1830s. Classicism drew on the forms, proportions, and restrained decoration of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. At Bartodzieje, the building was already described as spacious by the middle of the 1840s, although work on some details was still incomplete. A portico was added in front of the entrance during the second half of the nineteenth century, and a two-storey tower was built on the western side.
Later alterations and surviving walls
During the interwar period, the eastern wing received a staircase and several rooms, including a servants’ room. The roof was repaired after the Second World War, but the building later remained unheated and entered a long period of decline. The fire of November 2003 destroyed almost all of the interior and the roof structure. The floors then collapsed, leaving the external walls as the principal surviving part of the manor. The ruins continued to deteriorate afterward.
Farm buildings and park
Outbuildings and estate production
Two outbuildings form part of the surviving complex. The estate’s gardens and greenhouses were located near the farm buildings and supported the later horticultural activity of the Janowski family. In the late twentieth century, the neighbouring outbuilding was converted into a floor-mosaic factory, while other former farm buildings were altered for production. These changes followed the commercial expansion of greenhouse cultivation and mosaic manufacture under the owners who acquired the property in 1988.
Park and pond
The manor is surrounded by a park with a pond. Like the buildings, the park fell into disrepair during the years when the estate was unheated and production had ended. After the property changed hands in 2015, the park was tidied and the pond was put in order. These landscape elements remain part of the physical organization of the manor complex.
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