Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 15. (Tanulmányok Füzes Endre 70. születésnapja alkalmából. Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2002)

BERÉNYI MARIANNA- BUZÁS MIKLÓS: A csíkszentsimoni lakóház bontása kapcsán

Marianna Berényi—Miklós Búzás DISMANTLING OF THE DWELLING HOUSE IN CSIKSZENTSIMON In December 1999 the Hungarian Open Air Museum had the opportunity to carry out the dismantling of a dwelling house in Csikszentsimon in Hargita county in Transylvania for examination purposes. The dismantled dwelling house of no. 154 stood in the oldest part of the village, called Bolhaszeg. Following the inscription in the main girder beam the house was built in April 1829. The land belonging to the house is of irregular shape, similarly to the surrounding crofts. A part of the yard was separated for the cattle. The arrangement of the house shows a closed porch whose wall was made of carved boards, from here opened a big and a small room, furthermore there were two pantries. Both pantries were behind the big room, however, one of them could be entered from the small room. The house was constructed of mud-plastered pine log walls with transverse bracing. The simple rafter roof with perch structure had on both short ends a hipped roof with rafters. Smoke-holes broke through the roof, which was covered with long shingles. A stone basement was to be seen on the south-west and north-west sides. The big room, opening from the porch, had several surprises for the visitor. One of them was the upper part of the green glazed oven of tiles from Madaras. Originally it stood on the floor and cooking took place on its top by open fire. In the last time, an iron stove stood below it and the tiled part served as chimneyhood to abduct smoke. The other surprise in the room was the main girder beam with a Latin inscription informing about the time of construction: AEDIFICATA. PER. JOANEM. INCZE. CUM CONSORTESUA. JULIANA. VERES. ANO. DONI. 1829. DHL APR. We had two days for the dismantling of the house. The first day, we studied the walls and dismantled the roof with local help. The second day, we took down the walls and examined the floor. Due to the bad whether, we were not able to remove the frozen ground-sills, which were in a bad state. We left behind the bottom logs attached to the stone wall as well. The idea occurred to us during the dismantling that the simple tiled chimney-hood was installed much later after the construction of the house. We found out after removing the plaster that the board wall between the two pantries and the board wall between the big room and the small pantry were built later. The logs however, separating the big room and its pantry, were organic parts of the original building, and the doors of both pantries belonged also to the original outfitting. The question is taken up what is the relationship between the original doors and the walls built later. The several layers of daub prove that for a long time there was a small pantry opening from the big room and there was a direct entrance from the small room into the pantry. Earlier, the pantry was used also as a dwelling place concluded from the arrangement of the heating system. When checking the walls, we tried to find out the place of the former ovens. Besides the area of the present chimneyhood, we found traces of smoke only at the side of the pantry in the small room. After removing the plastering, we found traces of smoke on the oldest layer and it could be concluded that a heating device was always placed here. We established similar results after examining the roof, although we found several smoke-holes, which means that the place of the heating device was changed. As a summary we can say that far more questions arose during the dismantling than we could answer by analysing the traces left behind by the builders and dwellers. Regarding the arrangement of the ground-plan, the székelyhouse of South-East-Transylvania represents an individual type among the Hungarian house types from the end of the Middle-Ages. Wood architecture is typical for this region. From the beginning of modern times, there is a tendency to extend dwelling houses in order to create two rows of rooms: a porch was attached to our house and an other room/pantry (which might have been used as sleeping place) was added to the big room. The side-pantry has only a storing function in the still existing relics. From the beginning of the 19

th century, clamps for potatoes were dug in them and covered by planks. Our building was also provided with such a clamp. The main lesson we learnt from the dismantling of the house in Csikszentsimon is the fact that, in spite of the rich literature on the vernacular architecture of the Székelys, we know very little about how these houses used to be furnished and how men, women, old people and children lived in them. It is an urgent task to fill up these gaps, before this house-type disappears due to the economic development.