Photos

Village from the Small plain

The aim of founding the Szentendre Open Air Museum was to present folk architecture, interior decoration, farming and way of life in the Hungarian language area from the 2nd half of the 18th century to the 1st half of the 20th century, through original and authentic objects, relocated houses arranged in old settlement patters. The more and more elaborate settlement plan appropriates the relocation of more than 400 edifices into the museum, arranged into village-like regional units on the basis of ethnographical considerations.

Belfry, Újkér

Újkér of Catholic population ranked as a market town. Three smaller Lutheran villages, Felszopor, Alszopor and Makkoshetye joined the big village, well on its way to urbanization. This little belfry helped in Alszopor the Lutherans of noble stock, who could not raise a church, in practising their religion. They attended the church in Nemeskér on holidays or when the knell had to be sounded but in times of danger this bell gave far-sounding alarm to their threatened brethren.
The belfry was built of burnt brick early in the 19th century. Its entrance of slightly arched lintel is on the south side. The door is horizontally shuttered. On both south and north one-storey high a round-headed window is cut into the wall. The trussing is a simple, pyramid-shaped framework covered by a spire of carved brick plastered with cement. It is topped by a carved circular stone slab holding the wrought iron cross. A bell, founded with a Madonna in relief (1855) in Monostor, has been substituted for its original bell.

Small plain region (Kisalföld)

The region, a territory of characteristic natural geography and cultural history, received its name in the 18th century in distinction from the Great Hungarian Plain. The basin type, 7000 m2 flatland, including lesser parts of Lower-Austria and Western Slovakia, is bordered by the towns Pozsony, Érsekújvár, Komárom, Kisbér, Pápa, Kőszeg and Sopron.

The survival of medieval elements and the observance of traditions established in the 18th century, in coexistence with newly introduced materials and advanced techniques, typify vernacular architecture in the Kisalföld. In the 19th century rammed earth walls and walls of unburned, clayey earth, "moorish" brick, were universal. The remains of wattle-walled structures, too, can be found in the subregions between rivers. Home-burnt bricks, however, were widespread here earlier than in the rest of Hungary. In the vicinity of Sopron mixed walls were erected of local limestone and bricks.
Dwelling houses were erected on room-kitchen-pantry ground plans to which a stable was added from the last years of the 18th century. They had one entrance. The room, pantry and stable were repeated as families and livestock grew resulting in long straight houses on the shoelace plots. In the late 18th century L-shaped houses, with a corridor in the middle and access from both street and farmyard, became more and more widely distributed in the small market towns. The narrow plots ended, both in villages and market towns, in wide, transverse, cross-drive threshing- or hay-barns which the wagons approached from the road passing by the back of the crofts. (Source: skanzen.hu)