A Balaton-felvidék népi építészete. A Balatonfüreden, 1997. május 21-23-án megrendezett konferencia anyaga (Szentendre-Veszprém, 1997)

Ács Anna: Közök a Bakonyban és a Balaton-felvidéken

Yard-passages in the Bakony region and in the Balaton-Uplands ANNA ÁCS A peculiar structure of settlement has remained up to now in the Bakony region and the BalatonUplands. In settlements, which consisted originally of one single street and where the difference in the level of the land interrupted the row of houses, so-called yard-passages took shape. They were narrow passages for people to walk through, they were not allowed to be closed or blocked, they were to be used by everyone and guaranteed easy access to the main road. We know in this region yard-passages, which open to a main or side road. They were broad enough for a wagon to pass or for two wagons to cross. Houses stood after each other on one or both sides of a passage. In this cases, the yard-passages meant in fact a common yard. The structure of settlement with common yards is widespread in many regions of the Carpathian Basin, also in the northern strip of the Hungarian speaking territory, in the neighborhood of Sopron and in the counties Vas and Fejér. The geographic, social and economic factors which lead to their development are in several aspects different from those of the yard-passages in the Bakony region and the Balaton-Uplands. The process of developing of the yard-passages in the discussed area started after the expulsion of the Turks. The municipalities of the region reached the top of their possibilities to feed their inhabitants at the end of the 18th century as a consequence of the growth of the population. Further population growth was stopped by the surrounding forests and by the bad quality of soil in the agricultural land of the communities, making farming impossible on the one hand and by the freezing of the borders of the property lots inside the villages till more or less the middle of this century on the other hand. The size of the lots, however, allowed their division. Independent family members built their houses on the land one behind the other in such a way that the land was divided cross-wise. Occasionally, they built at the end of the lot, parallel to the main street. With the populating of the yards, the municipalities became overpopulated. By that, their development did not take the turn towards urbanization but this process led to rigidity. As family ties loosened up, outsiders settled down in the yard-passages. In our days, some of the yard-passages are abolished, some have been modernized. 216