Cseri Miklós - Bereczki Ibolya (szerk.): Ház és Ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 24. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2012)

Summary

therapy and health tourism provided supplementary income for several families. However, this opportunity has not been taken advantage of since the change of the political system and the number of visitors of the caves has diminished to a half. Cartographic representations of the area of Jósvafő village can be followed from the end of the I8

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h century on the pages of military surveys l-ll-lll. These surveys prove that the layout of the streets has not basically changed. This is confirmed in the cadastral map made in 1

868. Considerable changes did not occur until the second part of the 20

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h century, when on the area cultivated as gardens a 'New row' of residential houses with regular layout was developed. Owing to this, the old village has remained practically intact. Jósvafő, in the intersection of the gradually receding Jósva valley and the valleys adjoining at the end of it, is characterized by a peculiar layout. Karst springs burst to the surface from caves at the end of the valleys adjoining the end of the Jósva valley, the shape of which is similar to that of an open palm. None of these caves (Baradla, Béke-, Vass Imre-, and Kossuth-cave) were well known until the beginning of the 20"' century, in fact the Jósvafő entrance of Baradla only opened in 1

928 in the form of an artificial reservoir. The structure of the settlement is characterized by areas flanked by streams - called 'szög'- and also by rows of houses along longer, straight stream banks. The road (no. 2603) from Szín to Aggtelek (named Petőfi Sándor Street at present) crossing the village goes east along the Jósva Stream, after having united the streams of the neighbourhood. In terms of tourism marketing Jósvafő is called the 'Valley of caves and springs'. Even the name of the village includes the word 'spring': fő = spring, i.e. the spring of Jósva. While the water of bigger springs was used for generating energy so as to operate mills and forge-mills, the smaller ones were used as drinking water both for humans when working on arable land and in forests and for animals. The most enchanting spring of the neighbourhood is the Lófej spring (horse head) reaching the surface at altitude 425 m; the periodical bursts of it even inspired the poet Mihály Tompa. The water of the springs could be made to work by directing it to the wheels of the mill in so called millcanals, where the water-level needed to be kept at the same level as it was where the water entered the system. Mill-canals like this can be found near all the locations of one-time mills Jósva- and Kecső valleys) as well as in the neighbourhood of the hoe-mill (hammer-smith driven with water) operated below the Nagy-lohonya spring. Only the place of the onetime retteries is known. Most of them were situated at the end of the Jósva and Kecső valleys near the village, as well as where the 'New row' is located, the latter was called 'Wetland' ('Csáté') at that time referring to the watery otherwise unusable feature of the land. The streams crossing the village were both an opportunity and a threat at the same time. Water levels often fluctuated because floods raised water levels to manifold; therefore no permanent crossing places could be created enduring such extremes, which resorted to continuous maintenance and effecting restrictions during floods. The 19

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h century location of roads, bridges, footbridges and shallows are preserved in the cadastral map from 1868. There was a two-arch stone bridge in the centre of the village which is likely to have been built in the second part of the 19

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h century. In the place of that stands a heavy-duty reinforced concrete bridge. Until about the 19

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h century the dwelling houses of the village belonged to the North Hungarian (Palóc) type of houses. During the 1

9 hundreds elements and characteristics of house type from the Hungarian Plain - central Hungarian - had an effect and spread in the area through the valleys open towards the Plain. Oversized barns, granaries are remarkable in respect of both settlement history and economic history. These large outbuildings partly had timber frame structures - earlier with wattleand-daub walls, later covered with planks, recently with stone walls - and they comprise a specific, characteristic 'villagescape'. Groups of haylofts located in the meadows are similarly substantial, are also of timber frame structures, covered with planks, the significance of which, in respect of landscape, is also definitive. In 1993, 1994 and 1995 the students of Ybl Miklós College of Building surveyed all the crofts remarkable in terms of vernacular architecture (see Appendix). On the basis of this documentary work was the area of national monument outlined and appointed, the proposal for the cultural department made, the by-law no. I 1/1999 (VIII. 1

8.) passed and made effective by the Cultural Heritage minister. This is how the area became protected and the old 1

960 proposal of László VARGHA came to fruition. The protestant church with its boarded ceiling, built in the I 3

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h century, expanded at the end of the 18

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h century and the baroque belfry nearby from 1

851 stand out of the protected architectural monuments of Jósvafő. In former times the protestant cemetery over the belfry was famous for its wooden grave-markers. Among the sacred monuments it is the protestant cemetery and the Jewish cemetery nearby which are the most definitive among the sacred relics of the past. The so called wooden columns were used as gravemarkers in Jósvafő. With square shaped cross-section, mostly just the front is carved, decorated with cuts, notches and carving. Carving is usually found under the slanting top (recently protected with sheet tin or aluminium) in the first square. Nine petal tulips or hearts were carved for children, weeping willows, or rosemary for women, stars for men. In the top square is the year of burial, in the middle square the name of the deceased or a poem which includes the name. Different signs were used on the grave-markers of married men, women, 112