The subsequent Renaissance redesign and the sgraffito decorations executed at that time are attributed to the artisans employed at the Silesian workshop of the Parr family, originating from the town of Bissone, located in the Ticino canton (Switzerland).

History

The manor house, currently in a state of ruin, was erected during the fourth quarter of the 15th century. Since it was initially conceived as the seat of the local tax authorities of the Brzesko Duchy, it is believed that it must have been built before the year 1481, when the tax office in question was relocated to Białobrzezie from Niemcza. Initially a Late Gothic building of a rather moderate size, the manor house was subsequently redesigned in the Renaissance style somewhere between 1553 and 1560 following the initiative of Frederick III, the Duke of Legnica, with the aid of a pair of architects – Giovanni Parr and Giovanni Battista Parr. The second phase of the Renaissance redesign took place somewhere between 1570 and 1582.

The manor house, surrounded by a moat preceded by a wall crowned with a decorative parapet, was a compact, three-storey structure with a tall gable roof and decorative gables adorned with pinnacles and tracery. Back in the Middle Ages, its single-bay, tripartite interiors with a central vestibule featured flat ceilings, with stone barrel vaults being used for the basements. In the Renaissance phase of the building’s existence, however, the southernmost chambers were subdivided into two smaller rooms each; this change applied both to the basements and to the overground levels of the manor house. The ground floor rooms received new, vaulted ceilings of the barrel type, featuring adjoining lunettes and pronounced groins. Some of the windows received ornate, profiled (fasciated) window surrounds made of sandstone, as well as decorative sgraffito bands topped with lintel cornices; the sgraffito technique was also used for the dentilled crowning cornice and the rusticated bands accentuating the building’s corners. The façades themselves were covered with a reddish outer plaster layer, with the front façade being adorned by an impressive portal preceded by a bridge which spanned the nearby moat. The road towards the bridge led across a gate which formed part of the perimeter wall.

During the 18th century, the manor house underwent a partial Baroque redesign, with the northern part of the structure being adapted to serve as a chapel after 1707. Approximately the year 1770, the interiors received painted decorations the remnants of which can still be seen on the walls of the ground floor section of the building. In 1886, following the initiative of Wolf von Rohde, the erstwhile tenant of the manor, the front façade received a gabled avant-corps incorporating a staircase. Later on, between 1902 and ca. 1905, his successor in title, Adolf Rohde, commissioned a master brickmason Scholz to redesign and extend the mansion in the Baroque Revival style; it was at that point that the manor house received its western wing, which was subsequently torn down in 1958.

In the 1820s, 1820s, the establishment of a landscape park brought about significant changes in the immediate vicinity of the manor house.

Description

The manor house ruins, located inside a park originally founded in the 1820s and spatially linked to the nearby manor farm, are located at the western edge of the village.

The manor house was originally a single-bay, three-storey structure with a basement, designed on a rectangular floor plan with a north-eastern avant-corps housing the staircase (added in 1886) and a western wing erected in 1902 and subsequently demolished in 1958. All that remains of the manor house today are its peripheral walls, reaching up to the level of the crowning cornice. In the façade of the staircase avant-corps, above the remnants of the entrance portal, one can still glimpse the embedded upper section of another stone portal bearing the date 1553, with the heraldic cartouche of the Legnica branch of the Piast family adorned with scrollwork decorations and dating back to ca. 1570-1580 positioned directly above. On the south-eastern façade, vestiges of an oriel resting upon stone corbels can still be seen, originating either from the period between approximately 1902 and 1905 according to Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce (The Catalogue of Historical Monuments and Artefacts in Poland). Fasciated sandstone surrounds as well as remnants of sgraffito decorations survive around a number of window openings. In addition, vestigial traces of painted decorations can still be glimpsed on some of the interior walls.

The manor house is a private property and is therefore not open to visitors.It can be viewed from the outside.

Compiled by Beata Sebzda, The Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Wrocław, 20 March 2015.

Bibliography

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