Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 5. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1978)

Égető M.: A lakáshasználat változásai a szanki tanyákon az utóbbi száz évben

BY MELINDA ÉGETŐ CHANGES IN THE HOUSING IN THE FARMSTEADS OF SZANK IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS In the middle and southern parts of the plain between the Danube and Tisza rivers (among the towns of Szeged, Kecskemét, and Kiskunhalas), up to the middle of the 19th century a vast desolate country of several thousand hectares extended with windblown sand, open woodlands, grasslands, and sodic lakes. In the middle of the 18th century this land was bought up by towns of the privileged Kiskun and Jász districts. The inhabitants of these towns pursueing extensive stock breeding exploited the region as grazing lands for their cattle and sheep. But since this became less and less profitable from the middle of the 19th century onwards, these grazing lands — used undivided before — got divided into plots. In this way a characteristic settlement system and agricultural form developed in the area consisting of individual farming units each based on the labour of one family. With hard work lasting several decades the venturesome settlers established a fluorishing fruit and viticulture that fit the local conditions the best. With spontaueous clustering of some individual farmsteads also several closed village settlements developed. This paper examines a small segement of this large area, the village of Szank. The village in its recent form is the result of the unification of two former farmstead clusters, Szank and Móriczgát. The former one was originally the undividedly used grazing land of the inhabitants of the town of Kiskunfélegyháza. It was divided into plots between 1880 and 1890. For the plots lay 70 to 80 kms from the town, the inhabitants were not able to cultivate them from such a distance. The buyers had lived in towns and villages around the two grazing lands and actually originated from eight to ten localities (Szeged, Kiskunfélegyháza, Szentlászló, Kiskunhalas, Kiskunmajsa, etc.). Most of them settled into the area between 1890 and 1900. Though, a central kernel came into being through further parcellisation in 1895, the settlers generally built their houses and outbuildings ontheir plots. Three quarters of the inhabitants still lived on scattered, individual farmsteads in 1965, in the time of this study. The author's aim is the examination of the development of the housing culture and the changes in the latter on these settlements that had started almost on the zero point. In the 80 to 100 year-long timespan from the beginning of the settlement there can be divided into three more or less well-determinable periods. In respect to the whole population these periods cannot be distinguished from each other by absolute dates since settling itself lasted several decades. The first period is the time of settling. Being the overwhelming majority of the settlers propertiless people they had to sell everything they had in their original dwelling-place in order to be able to get capital for buying the plot itself and also the most necessary instruments of labour and draught animals to its cultivation. As for housing, characteristic for the first period was the building of a temporary home. They built an earthen house dug into the soil without ascending walls. This was called putri or putriba^. They furnished it with berths and things to sit on made by themselves. Outside the earthen house they built an oven and a fire-place for baking and cooking. The settler families generally lived one to five years in such earthen houses. Building and furnishing a permanent house with ascending walls characterize the second period. These houses were built of materials of local origin. Their constructional solutions and ground plans corres194