A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1968 (Debrecen, 1970)

Dankó Imre: Folk Architecture in two Hajdú-towns

Imre Dankó Folk Architecture in two Hajdú-Towns The author has published several papers on the style of folk architecture of the territory known as "Hajdúság" (the eastern part of the Hungarian Plain, where István Bocskai founded six towns for his foot-soldiers in 1606). His aim is to write a comprehensive study of folk architecture of this area. So far he has investigated this problem in Hajdúnánás and Hajdúböszörmény. Both these towns are built on hard soil. Hajdúhadház and Vámospércs, however, are settlements on loose, shifting sandy land. The form and style of architecture in the above towns reflects this difference. The main building material in hard-ground settlements is earth and its various forms; in towns built on sand it is wood (branches, beams, logs, planks, staves, pales, sticks, etc.), straw, reed supported with earth and clay. The tradition of using wood for building houses dates back, in all probabilities, to medieval times. Hajdúhadház and Vámospércs have one thing in common: they are based on settlements with were originally built on cleared woodland. In the Middle Ages Hajdúhadház was developing into a town (the name of the town is first recorded in charters in 1313, its church, demolished at the end of the 19th century, was built in the 15th century). Vámospércs, however, has always been a village. Geographically they both belong to the Nyírség (the district in north-eastern Hungary, Hajdú-Bihar county), an area composed of sand dunes and covered, even today, with extensive forests. While the architecture of hard-soil Hajdú-settlements is similar to those in the Nagykunság (plainland west of Debrecen) and is clearly influenced by Debrecen, the architecture on sandsoil settlements has much in common with those in the Nyírség and the upper Tisza region. Debrecen has come to influence them only recently, formerly the effect of Nagykálló, Erdmihályfalva, Nagykároly, Szatmár (Valea lui Mihai, Carei, Satu-Маге, Romania) was much stronger. In view of these circumstances peasant and town-houses built on hard soil on one hand, peasant and manor houses on sand soil on the other, can be distinguished. The houses of peasants and manor houses were not very different in character, because the way of living of impoverished gentry was much the same as that of poor peasants themselves. Architecturally the difference lies in the manor houses being larger, of manorial style, having arch-portico on the front. Traces of great historical changes in architectural style can be seen on them: Baroque frontage, tranquil neoclassic forms in later times. The folk architecture of the two Hajdutowns built on sandy soil has undergone the development characteristic of the border-area of the Great Hungarian Plain. In médiával times a great number of houses was made of wood, the majority, however, of earth (hovels) with fairly good building techniques by the beginning of the 16th century. The destruction caused by the Turkish occupation during the 16th and 17th centuries brought a general decline and the settlement of the Heyduks (early 17th century) shows earth as building material. It took a long period of historical development for the people to replace earth and its various forms by brick which has come to be used for building houses only fairly recently. Owing to adverse geographical circumstances the architecture of these places, populated by poor people, lagged behind hard-soil settlements, Vámospércs exhibiting the most primitive characteristics of all. Hajdúhadház had, for a long time, the right of being a town, whereas Vámospércs ceased to be a town after the Hajdu-district lost its administrative autonomy. The settlement of Hajdúhadház was originally based on a garden-like pattern which can be explained by the town being a fortress. The church, built in medieval times, stood in the centre, fortified by a moat and a wooden fence on the inner bank of the moat. The settlement within the enclosed area followed a miliatry order, the various districts being constituted by ten men. The sheds for animals, gardens, barns, stacks, cocks of hay and straw were located uotside the moat. Such a pattern existed only until the end of the 18th century, when these outer places came also to be fortified. In the case of Vámospércs it is still a matter of conjecture whether it had a garden-pattern 21* 323