History

The first church in Kraszewo, of Holy Trinity and St Lawrence, was built simultaneously with the establishment of the parish in the second half of the 14th century and was most probably a wooden structure (the first mention thereof comes from 1435). In the second half of the 16th century the erection of a brick temple began - only the St Anna chapel, a sacristy and a treasury were built. Probably the death of the benefactor did not allow completing the construction works. In the 17th century a wooden part was added to the abovementioned fragments preserved to this day and constituting the north brick wall. Before 1775, by funding of a land judge of Ciechanów, Mikołaj Modzelewski, a damaged wooden substance was replaced with the new one. Most likely at this time a wooden bell tower was erected nearby. The church was renovated first in 1825, then in 1948. The most recent major renovation of the temple took place in 1973 - among others, the foundations, the ceiling and the roof truss were replaced and the roof was clad in sheet metal.

Description

The church is located in the middle of the village, on the north side of the road leading from Ciechanów to Płock, on a plot sloped towards the north and surrounded with a fence made of stones. In the west, in the area of a church graveyard, a wooden bell tower and a historic grave of Count Bruno Kiciński (founder of “Kurier Warszawski”) and his daughter Halina are located.

The church is oriented towards the east and was built of wooden material in a post and beam structure, reinforced with vertical supports, with walls covered with vertical board-and-batten siding on both sides, terminating at the corners in faux-rustication, as well as of bricks plastered on the inside (the St Anna chapel, the sacristy and the treasury). The single-nave church was built on a rectangular floor plan, with a narrower chancel terminating in a straight wall. A wooden porch adjoins the nave on the west side, while a brick part of the church, namely the St Anna chapel and the sacristy with a separated treasury adjoins on the north side. The nave, the chancel and the chapel are covered with beamed ceilings, while the sacristy is topped with a barrel vault with a lunette above the entrance. Cannonballs were placed in the external part of the chapel wall. A gable roof with pediments and with roof ridges separate for the nave and the chancel is clad in sheet metal. The roof ridge of the nave is crowned with an octagonal steeple with a bulbous cupola clad in sheet metal, topped with an openwork metal crucifix. The porch is covered with a separate gable roof. The church has Baroque and Baroque-folk interior fixtures and fittings. What deserves particular attention is the altars (the main one from 1720 and the side one from around 1700), the Baroque-folk pulpit from 1726, the confessional from the 18th century and the St Stanislaus Kostka reliquary from the 18th century.

A wooden bell tower included in the complex was erected on a rectangular floor plan, in a post-and-beam structure, and features vertical board-and-batten cladding. In the upper part of the walls the bell openings are visible (two per each side) in the form of recumbent rectangles, obscured by wooden shutters. The high walls are covered in their entirety with a hip roof of wood shingles crowned with a wooden pinnacle.

The building is accessible to visitors during masses and following previous arrangements with the parish priest in Malużyn.

Author of the note Jerzy Szałygin, National Institute of Cultural Heritage, Regional Branch in Warsaw 19-02-2018

Bibliography

• Record sheets of monuments of architecture, the so-called white sheet: Kościół parafialny p.w. Św. Trójcy, prepared by Joanna A. Wasilewska, 1991; the so-called green sheet: Kościół p.w. Św. Trójcy i Św. Zygmunta, prepared in 1959.
• Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce, vol. X. Dawne woj. warszawskie, issue 1. Ciechanów i okolice, Warsaw 1977, p. 33-34.
• Kościół p.w. Świętej Trójcy Kraszewo: http://skarbiecmazowiecki.pl/obiekty/kosciol-pw-swietej-trojcy-ciechanowski-wschodni-ojrzen-kraszewo-40-82,1.html
• Kraszewo – kościół http://www.drewnianemazowsze.pl/kraszewo-kosciol/
• Szałygin J., Wiśniewski J., Materiały do katalogu drewnianego budownictwa sakralnego na Mazowszu, Mazowsze no. 3/94, pp. 40-41.