Szabó Sarolta (szerk.): Hagyomány és változás a népi kultúrában.(Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 58. Nyíregyháza, 2005)

NÉPRAJZ - Veres Gábor: A települések hagyományos képe és szerkezete Heves megyében

Gábor Veres: The Traditional Layout and Structure of Settlements in Heves County In the county there is no town or even large villages north of the line of the Mátra and Bükk Mountains. This region is characterized by small settlements that came into being in narrow valleys and smaller basins. These geographical features explain that the long and narrow plots of land are often lined up along one single street. The houses were built on he street front, whereas the other end of the plot often runs up the hillside. In terms of morphological types, these long and narrow stripes of land are the most common in the settlements. The central axis of the settlement is a valley road or a creek. Houses arranged in clusters are also found in some of the areas, e. g. at Egerbocs, Mátraderecske and, Csány, and the "spindle-shaped" village centre, characteristic of areas up in the north, is also present, e. g. at Detk. At the villages where the share of the nobility in the local population was high, the stratification of society was reflected by the layout of the settlement. This was the case at Bátor, Balaton, Egercsehi and Tarnalelesz, where the places inhabited by the nobility and that by the peasants were clearly discernible. In the 19th century, the peasants had standard stripes of land, whereas the plots of lands of the noblemen were different in size and shape. Both the divided and undivided types of settlements are found in the county. At an undivided settlement a plot of land was not only a building site in which a family home used to stand, but also the site and centre of agricultural production, as at Mónosbél and Bélapátfalva. Where agricultural production was separated from the place of living, it was, naturally, clearly reflected by the layout of the settlement. Not only the use, but also the size and shape of a plot of land were determined by the fact whether its functioned doubled as a garden or not. At Tarnalelesz the families of lesser nobility grouped their gardens together in a line or in a cluster, and cultivated them jointly. When they erected buildings in theses sites, new streets came into being. The streets were named after the families living there.