The church belongs to the group of wooden Baroque churches built along the boundary between Mazowsze (Mazovia) and Podlasie regions around the mid-18th century. It is an example of a type of church designed without a tower, featuring a nave, narrower chancel and front avant-corps covered by a common roof with a steeple jutting out from the roof ridge.

History

The first mentions of a wooden church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, St Barbara, St Jacob the Apostle and the Ten Thousand Martyrs in Radziłów date back to the 15th century. In 1739, the present church was erected at the initiative of the erstwhile parish priest, Jakub Tafiłowski. Renovation works were carried out in the years 1760, 1811, 1820, 1867-79 (when the steeple jutting from the roof ridge was replaced) and in 1962. During the most recent restoration, the interior of the church received new painted decorations created by Stanisław Długozima. In the 1980s, a new, brick church was erected in the immediate vicinity, with the old structure subsequently relocated to the village of Kramarzewo.

Description

The church is located in the south-western part of the village, on the site of a fenced cemetery designed on a polygonal plan. The church is oriented towards the east. It was designed in the Baroque style.

The church is a wooden log structure positioned on brick and field stone foundations, its walls clad with weatherboards. The nave was designed on a roughly square plan and is adjoined by a rectangular chancel. The chancel is flanked by a storage section and a sacristy, likewise designed on a rectangular plan. The western avant-corps designed on a rectangular plan, its longer side positioned transversely towards the nave, houses the vestibule and the pipe organ gallery. The roof above the chancel and the nave is of the gable type and features a single roof ridge running above both sections of the church; the storage area and the sacristy are covered with shed roofs. A quadrangular steeple crowned with a conical roof rises above the roof ridge where the nave and the chancel meet. The façades feature vertical board and batten siding, with horizontal divisions beneath the windows. The interior follows a pseudo-basilica, three-nave layout, with the side aisles separated by two pairs of posts interconnected with segmental arches. The walls are adorned with ornamental wall paintings.

The fixtures and fittings include three Late Baroque altarpieces from the third quarter of the 19th century, the sculptures of St Peter and St Paul, the painting of St Barbara (a copy of which is also displayed in the parish church in Radziłów) positioned in the top section of the main altarpiece, as well as the Late Baroque pulpit in the shape of a boat, crafted in 1781 in Pułtusk and featuring a sail-shaped canopy.

The historic monument can be viewed from the outside; the interiors can be explored during church service.

compiled by Iwona Górska, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Białystok, 05-11-2014.

Bibliography

• Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce, vol. IX: Województwo łomżyńskie, issue 1: Łomża i okolice, prepared by Kałamajska-Saeed M., Warsaw 1982, pp. 53-4.
• Rudnicki J., Zabytki Ziemi Łomżyńskiej, Rajgród 2005, vol. 3, pp. 124-6.