Wooden and timber-frame churches of Great Poland - Zabytek.pl
Wooden and timber-frame churches of Great Poland
This collection includes wooden and timber-frame churches of Greater Poland. In addition to brick churches with diverse stylistic features, they constitute a distinctive attribute of the region. Their presence enriches settlement landscape and they are an extremely valuable part of cultural heritage of Greater Poland. In the Wielkopolskie voivodeship, 224 churches are entered in the register of monuments. Of that number, 46 are churches based on a timber frame, also called half-timbered structure.
They occur mostly in the north of the region, joining Western Pomerania, and they are scattered in remaining parts of the voivodeship. Part of them are post-Evangelical churches converted into Catholic ones. The vast majority of the wooden churches were built on the basis of a log structure. Part of them feature post-and-plank structure. In the region, there are churches with doubled structure, which stems from the fact that the original log structure present in them was covered from the outside by a timber frame, which was in turn covered by weatherboards or filled with brick over time. More than a dozen churches was founded in the 16th century, and a few of them have retained their original, late-Gothic form. The oldest church is located in Tarnowo Pałuckie; its oldest beams originate, reportedly, from the 14th century. A significant part (approx. 145 churches), mainly with Baroque features, came into being in the 18th century. The churches from the 19th and the 20th century are quite modest and lack innovative architectural solutions. Throughout their existence, the churches were subject to reconstruction, their fittings were changed, and successive layers of painted decorations covered their walls. The most beautiful one can be seen in Tarnowo Pałuckie and in Słopanowo.