Kecskés Péter (szerk.): Upper Tisza region (Regional Units of Open Air Museum. Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1980)
2. THE VILLAGE
The farm buildings were located in such a way on the plots that the beasts should not stray about the courtyard. The stables were built with their backs to the street, the dwelling house was erected behind them and the barn was at the most distant point on the plot. Descriptions from Transylvania and from other regions east of the Tisza from the 17th —18th centuries mention similar arrangements dividing the plot into several portions, the houses of noblemen being built behind the farm-yard which gives on to the street. In the above-mentioned regions, not only noblemen but peasants would also arrange their farmyard in a similar manner possobly dividing the various parts of the yard with fencing. Nowadays few such plots have remained in County Szatmár (111. 3.). From the beginning of the last century, a new kind of arrangement commenced, with the houses being built along the street and the farm buildings behind the house. Buildings Whilst the exteriors of the houses varied, the interior arrangements were more tradition-bound. The length of the buildings is approximately double their width: half of the ground-plan is occupied by the room, a third or a quarter by the kitchen, the size of the „chambre" varying. The size of the latter depended on the quantity of grain to be stored, and whether there was a separate granary or not on the site. This type of house consisting of one room, kitchen and „chambre" — had existed since medieval times; later another typs of house was also built, influenced by the mansions of nobles beginning in the 18th century. The size of the stables depended on the number of animals kept on the farm. The size of the granaries and of the stables reflected also the effects of decades of prosperity. Various buildings had already appeared in medieval times. Thus the large barns in which grain would be trodden out by horses or the barrack for sheltering hay erected according to age-old proportions plus many small buildings of various functions which were of a variety of forms and sizes, all sorts of storage bins, pig-pens and chicken-pens, baking houses, bee-hive shelters and corn-rafters. (111. 4—5.) Compared to the buildings and the farmyards of western Hungary and the Great Plain which were built to keep pace with the prosperity of the 18th century, the farmyards of Erdőhát are far 14
