A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)
Előadások / Presentations - ÁGOSTHÁZI László: Szántódpuszta, a large farm in baroque style
houses figuring in the lax register in 1536. Its recovery took place after Turkish occupation ended and the Benedictine returned to their Tihany estates. The reactivation of the various parts of the estate and the reconstruction of the farm was the most intensive during Grasso Vilibald's abbotship /1719-1740/. He was the one to introduce large-scale farming and set up manors on the Benedictine estates. Szántód recovered its sizeable stud, and by the end of the 18th century its population approximated one hundred. The number of families living here was between 15 and 20. Most of the buildings still existing were built during the abbotship of Béla Bresztyenszky /1838-1850/. Since that time, the estate has been used for large-scale farming, that being the function of the new buildings erected. While the manor house, referred to as „Castle", was extended, new buildings including labourers' houses, a chapel, enormous sheds, a barn, coach houses and workshops were built. There are hardly any changes to the picture that took shape in the middle of the 19th century until Benedictine estates are nationalised in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the period when the manor operated as a cooperative was marked with negligence and carelessness until the first steps aimed at the protection and preservation of the architectural qualities of the manor were taken at the instigation of Dr János Fodor, then head of the Somogy county Tourist Office. Actual restoration required that the buildings receive a completely new function: they were connected to Lake Balaton's tourist network. 20TH CENTURY METAMORPHOSIS When the architectural qualities and the significance of Szántódpuszta as an asset of the history of farming were recognised in the 1960s, research on them shortly followed. This intention to identify and save the heritage was what lead to the adoption of joint decree n° 42/1977.MÉM-ÉVM-KM on the protection and registration of the outstanding assets of agricultural history. 4 Nation-wide stock-taking began, and the data of many farming ensembles qualified as valuable were registered. (The data collected are stored by the Ministry of Agriculture.) It is to be noted that a selected part of the collected material was displayed at an exhibition organised by OMF /National Board for the Supervision of Historic Monuments/ and the Hungarian Agricultural Museum in the exhibition halls of the latter in 1980, then at Szántódpuszta in 1981 and 1982. Each stage of the „discovery" of Szántódpuszta has a record in literature. The buildings on the puszta are not even quoted in István Genthon's books published in the 1950s 5 , nor in the book on monuments around Lake Balaton 6 , and not even in the register of monuments issued in 195 3 7 . The church is the first to appear on paee 366 of the 1960 register 8 , qualified as an asset of monument-like character. Page 563 of the next register has a long list of these buildings, protected as ones of monument-like character, including, with good reason, sties, pits and an oven for baking bread. Interestingly enough, guidebooks are keeping in pace with the events and contain a more or less detailed appraisal of the puszta buildings as of the sixties. 0 All the above are symbolic of the acknowledgement of the puszta heritage and are the result of various efforts made at their preservation. The efforts themselves, of course date from far before. Here is a non-comprehensive list of some of the official measures taken in order to save the buildings of the puszta: - 18th October, 1960: first official ..presentation", an on-site inspection involving only specialists from the Agricultural Museum, the Museum of Ethnography, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Board for Tourism, the Balaton Board, OMF, the County Council of Somogy and the Somogy county Tourist Office (SIOTOUR)
