History

Count Johannes Edgar Henckel von Donnersmarck, the owner of the palace and park complex and the grange in Gręboszów, funded a new, stone temple in the family cemetery next to the existing wooden church. Frank Thomas Baggallay and Walter Millard John Nash designed a neo-Romanesque church alluding to the architecture from the British Isles. The construction spanned two years between 1897 and 1899.

The church was upgraded in the years 1936-1937; the articulation of external walls was simplified and some architectural details were removed. Before the transfer of the wooden church to the Open-Air Village Museum in Opole-Bierkowice, both buildings were to be seen in the small cemetery in Gręboszów.

Description

The brick church has a south-west orientation. Its compact body houses a nave and transept, apse chancel, massive tower, and smaller annexes. Today’s architecture of the church is the effect of the 1930s transformation. The window grating still bears the Third Reich emblem (so-called “gapa”). Monochrome façades are articulated with slotted, arched windows.

The church is in use; is managed by the Roman Catholic Parish of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Martin in Strzelce.

Compiled by Joanna Szot, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Opole,01-02-2015 r.

Bibliography

• Degen K., Bleyl W., Werbik W., Focke F., Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Namslau (Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler Schlesiens. RegierungsbezirkBreslau, Bd. 2), Breslau 1939.
• Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce, t. VII: Województwo opolskie, z. 7: Powiat namysłowski, oprac. T. Chrzanowski, M. Kornecki, Warszawa 1965.
• Lutsch H., Verzeichnis der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien, Bd. 2: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Landkreise des Reg.-Bezirks Breslau, Breslau 1889.
• Zabytki sztuki w Polsce. Śląsk, Warszawa 2006.