Entz Géza Antal - Sisa József (szerk.): Fejér megye művészeti emlékei - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 34. (Székesfehérvár, 1998)

Rövidítések a címszavakban - Rövidítések a bibliográfiában

ors developed into villages, while in the 19th and 20th centuries fartmsteads sprang up around some large villages.

The typical plot is ribbon-shaped, usually comrising three units: dwelling yard, commercial yard and garden. The house itself runs lengthwise followed in a row by the stable and a barn. The traditional materials of the houses were mud or wattle. Stone was used for winecellars, press-houses and water mills. Unlike peasant houses, buildings belonging to the estates (inns, schools), and also houses of the lesser nobilty were constructed of solid materials. The pitched roof was the most general type of roofs in the county with reeds or thatch, the gable being composed of laths.

The street front of the house usually had a single, asymmetrically placed window. A porch along the length of the house was usually favoured by well-to-do peasants or lesser noblemen; it was supported by wooden beams or pillars. The rooms within the house were strung along in a single range, one opening from the other at the centre. The living room had traditionally a main girder beam and an outward-stoking oven, the kitchen a range with large, open flue above it. In some houses in the North of the county the room was heated by means of a tile-stove. In some villages (Martonvásár, Csór, Nagyláng) large granaries were built in the 18th century for noble or aristocratic estates.

The traditional type of dwelling described above is disappearing fast from the villages. Modernization, remodelling and, at least as often, replacement of old houses are the order of the day. In some villages one old house is preserved in its original form as a museum (Füle, Velence). Commercial buildings tend to survive more than dwelling houses, in most villages press-houses and wine cellars are the only reminders of vernacular architecture.

In the 18th century up to 15 settlements, mostly along important roads or waterways, developed into market towns. (Their legal position was between royal cities and the villages of the serfs.) Some of them, e.g. Mór and Bodajk, became local urban centres already in the 18th century, not least owing to the presence of churches, monasteries and mansions there. Csákvár, once a prospering market town, lost much of its importance in the 19th century because it was by-passed by the railway line. Bicske flourished in the second half of the 19 th century, Ercsi in the 1920s. Velencei Lake in the north of the county became a popular resort area in the second half of the county with settlements developing fast on its southern shore-.

The county was devastated at the end of World War II: first it was quickly invaded by the Soviet Red Army, then retaken by the Germans in fierce fighting, until months later they were overwhelmed again by the Soviets. Several churches were badly damaged; their restoration usually started soon afterwards. Another fate awaited the country houses. In some cases they were already looted by the retreating Germans, a job subsequently completed by the Soviet soldiers and the local population. Thus, sadly, the furniture, the pictures and other works of art, the libraries and the archives belonging to country houses were all destroyed or dispersed in a county which once boasted the highest concentration of such buildings and collections in Hungary. The enormous loss was compounded by the destruction of some of the buildings themselves. The derelict houses started to decay, or were used for inappopriate purposes. Some of them, along with their gardens, have been restored recently (Seregélyes, Nagy láng).

Thanks to its central position, Fejér county was again at the fore-front of architecture in the early 1950s. At the height of totalitarianism the Communist model city of Hungary was built there, called Sztálinváros at the time, now named Dunaújváros. Following the example of the Soviet Union a huge steel plant, and north of it, a large residential area went up. The

168