Rusu, Adrian Andrei - Szőcs Péter Levente: Arhitectura religioasă medievală din Transilvania 4. (Satu Mare, 2007)
Restaurări / Helyreállítások / Restoration - Szabó Tekla: Az őraljaboldogfalvi református templom felújításai
Szabó Tekla 298 original form: the nave was heightened, and the new spire was not organically connected with the remaining parts of the tower. The first description of the church was made by a greco-catholic priest, Ştefan Moldovan, in 1854. At that time the frescoes were covered by plaster. The interest of the specialists was raised by the discovery of the frescoes, by Flóris Römer, short before 1869. For further investigation, Ferenc Storno was sent to Săntamăria Orlea by the Archaelogical Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His notebooks and the drawings are preserved in the Museum of Sopron. These are mainly architectural drawings, but they also represent the frescoes, still partially discovered. On 22nd of July, 1870, after a great storm the roof of the church was destroyed and the plaster in the northern side of the interior, covering the frescoes, felt down. The parish priest asked for help from the Archaeological Comittee. Therefore, Imre Steindl, the architect at the restoration work of the nearby castle of Hunedoara, inspected the church in the autumn of 1872. His journey was documented by the registry and documents of the newly founded commitee for monument protection in Budapest (MOB). The Ministry of Religion and Education approved the investigation and copying of the frescoes, in the winter of 1873. The copies in natural scale and new architectural drawings were made by Ottó Sztehló, assistant to Steindl. The restoration work of the church, however, was started only on 3(/h of May, 1908. István Möller was appointed as leading architect, working at the same time at the restoration of Hunedoara castle. During this restoration work, the destroyed stones were changed, the tower was stabilized with steel bares and it was covered with a new winched spire, but the original high of the church nave was not rebuilt. A new phase of the restoration was after the Second World War In 1957 and 1974, the Direction of Historical Monuments (DMI) from Bucharest planed the renewals of the church, but none of the projects were implemented - in 1977 the institute was reorganized. In spite of these, the roof tiles were changed, in this period. Today, the Calvinist church is planning the restoration of the building, especially the damaged roof: the shingles are since September of2005 in the church. The problems of the humidity and the consolidation of the frescoes is still a remaining problem.
