Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 6. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1990)

BALASSA M. IVÁN: Az Alsó-Garam menti magyar falvak települése, építkezése és lakásberendezése

type of house is usually considered a result of extensions necessitated by the needs of the „nagycsalád" (a „big family" of more than one generation living under the same roof), it was all the more remarkable because László SZABÓ had been able to follow the existence of big family up to the end of the 19th century. The factor that caused the longitudinal extension of dwelling houses in neighbouring areas here seems to have had no effect in this respect. The facts that the pantry was also used as a place for sleeping, and that this is the westernmost fringe of the territory where the term ház (house) is used to mean room, (to the south and west the word szoba /room/ is in use) seem to indicate that related groundplan arrangements should rathef be looked for in the Északi Középhegység (c. northern mountains of medium height) than to the west. The walls were made of earh all over the region, but building techniques differed. In Kisgyarmat and Bény, lying along the river Garam on sandy soil, houses of sárfal (mudwall) prevailed. In Bart and Szőgyén situated on elevations of more heavy soils, the tömöttfal or „vertfal" (cobwall or wall made of beaten earth) were universal. Up to 1945 most of the buildings were earth-walled with a few houses, made of adobe, appearing from the beginning of the century. After 1945 brick has perfectly replaced earth as a building material. Both kinds of earthen walls had their specialists. The cobwall makers of Szőgyén and Bart also worked in the neighbouring villages. Similar phenomena could be experienced in Kisgyarmat in respect of mud walls. As regards trussing, it could be established that purlin roofs resting on Y-shaped uprights, which can now only be seen on structures outside the boundaries of the village (e. g. the vineyard huts at Kisújfalu), had been used for dwelling houses, too, before the turn of the century. As purlin roofs supported by scissors beams became increasingly frequent, with trussings of side-purlin, and usually braced tie beam also gaining ground from the turn of the century, the terms applied to the various parts of the trussing were more and more often mixed up. The denominations szelemen (purlin), horogfa or szarufa (sloping beam), sárgerenda (wall plate), koszorúgerenda (gird) seem to have been uniformly used in all four villages. With the appearance of newer structures trussing and ceiling separated, with the cross beams above the room only supportig the latter. The scissors beams and braces with gird respectively, which supported the roof, were mortised into a timber frame above the ceiling boarding. The roof was thatched, in some places with a layer of reed below. The roof are ridge roofs with a gable of boards. This was completed, in cases where the roof rested on a ridge-pool supported by Y-shaped uprights, with a pediment of wattle-and-daub. The fact that purlin roofs whose ridge-pole was supported by Y-shaped uprights was known here also points at ties with the Great Hungarian Plain. To the north of the area examined rafter roofs dominate and to the east, betwen the river Ipoly and the Börzsöny Mountains, although in principle the occurrence of roof where the ridge-pole was supported by Y-shaped uprights is demonstrable, their practical execution cannot be unambiguously reconstructed. The presence of this type of trussing is demonstrable in the Little Plain (the Plain in North-Western Hungary) and the present territory of Komárom county south of the Dabube alike but, in a remarkable manner, it seems to have been completely missing in Szentendre Island where other features of the type of houses characteristic of the Great Hungarian Plain appeared in ample measure. The data the west of the Börzsöny Mountains and Szentendre Island warn us not to put too much vaule on the fact that the purlin roof supported by Y-shaped uprights was obviously known by the lower reaches of the river Garam. From the point of view of terminology it is worthy of attention that the denomination horogfa for the rafters holding the roof and its versions are known in the Little Plain and the villages to the north of it, but not father than the Nagyölved (Vel'ké Ludince) - Ebed (Obid) line. East of the river Garam, in Csáb (Cebovec), Palást (Plást'ovce), Bolyk (Bol'kovce), etc. and in the northern part of today's Pest county, Nógrád, only the designation szarufa is used and horogfa only appears again on the north-western fringes of the Great Hungarian Plain, i. e. in region of flatland character. Although the pages of the Magyar Nyelv Atlasz (The Atlas of Hungarian Language) covering the names of certain element of trussing are not perfectly unambiguous, it cannot be by chance that territories where the designations horogfa and szarufa are used seem to be separated roughly by the line of the river Garam. Examining the heatind devices I have stated that under the open chimney in the kitchen where the oven in the room was stoked from, there was a wide fire ledge, called tüszel. The back part of the kitchen (here called pitar) was separated from its first part by two low walls (stopping far short of either the ceiling or each other) called ellenző. In the room, there was on top of the fire bench a wattle-walles and daubed oven made in the shape of a truncated pyramid. Relying on her memory, Valeria FARKASOVÁ of Kőhídgyarmat has reconstructed an oven reminiscent of the lid of a coffin. I myself could find no relic of ovens of this shape in the four villages studied. The next stage in the development of ovens was the one, still in the room, but with an angular body. With the disappearance of ovens, in the course of which, as a short interlude, a few tiled ovens also occurred, the rooms were heated with kitchenranges made of adobes which were replaced after the 1920s by economy cookers. The oven, however, has not been expelled. Its new place became the back corner of the „pitvar" bordering on the dwelling room, called vidófli. The vindófli is a closed sturcture whose lower part contained the horizontal, angular bread-baking oven and the upper part, similar to a small open chimney could also be used for smoking meat. The issue of heating devices proved expecially interesting in the four villages studied. As Antal FILEP stated, between the Little Plain and Szentendre Island there is a heating device different from the ones registered in the former place. A large mud oven of arching shapes, reminiscent of the lid of a coffin, could be found, in the rooms in Komárom county surrounded by a sitting bench made of boards. The firing area of the oven was on a ledge. These ovens were made of warrle and daubed with mud. This type has been thoroughly researched, as reported by Antal FILEP, by László VARGHA in Martos (Martovce). The oven rekonstructed by