History

Wierzchowiska is a village with long, 15th-century traditions, founded and owned by the local nobility; until the late 18th century, the village formed part of the Modliborzyce demesne. During the early 19th century, when the manor remained in the hands of Wojciech Wierciński, the deputy district governor (starosta) of Drohiczyn, the country home of the lord of the manor was a rather modest, wooden manor house that had undergone numerous alteration and extension works, including the addition of a brick section. It is difficult to say with any degree of certainty to what extent was the old building used as the basis for the new one, the construction of which began when the land was acquired by Gustaw Świda and his wife, Maria Świda née Przewłocka, in 1902. At that time, the general outline of the manor house recorded on period photographs was similar to the present one, with a recessed portico and two avant-corps up front; the mansard roofs, the decorative gables and the front stairs, however, were definitely added at a later date. It is now believed that the manor house attained its final shape in the 1920s, when the manor remained in the hands of Gustaw Świda Jr., whose wife was Zofia Skibińska, the daughter of a well-known Warsaw industrialist. The redesign of the house incorporated numerous features of the fashionable “old manor house style”, taking its cues from the well-known drawings by Stanisław Noakowski, a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology.

After World War II came to an end, the manor served as a State Agricultural Farm (PGR); later on, during the 1960s and the 1970s, the house became a school and a recreational centre for teachers and then a training and recreational centre maintained by a scouting association. From the late 1980s, having been taken over by the commune authorities, the manor house remained disused for many years. Later on, the building was acquired by a private individual and underwent a comprehensive restoration in years 2002-2012. The manor house was adapted to serve as a hotel and restaurant, with both its architecture and façade decorations being meticulously preserved. In 2012, the manor house received an award of the Regional Monument Inspector for the Lublin region as a sign of recognition of the outstanding quality of conservation works performed.

Description

The complex is located at the edge of the Sanna river valley, in the northern part of the village. It consists of a brick manor house surrounded by a landscape park.

The manor house was designed in the so-called Polish manor house style which takes its cues from the Baroque period and which came into being during the quest for the Polish national style. It is a single-storey building with a habitable attic and a basement. Erected on a bipartite plan which was most likely the result of the fact that the house replaced an earlier structure that stood on the exact same spot, the manor house in Wierzchowiska consists of the main body and a narrow western wing. The main body was designed on a floor plan with a shape approximating that of a square and features a pair of avant-corps on the outermost edges, flanking a recessed portico. The interior originally followed a tripartite, two-bay layout in the middle section, which housed the hall and the drawing room; the side sections of the building follow a three-bay layout. The building is made of brick and limestone, its walls covered with plaster. The current ceilings inside the building are made of reinforced concrete, although some of the basements feature surviving original barrel vaults. The individual sections of the house are covered with mansard roofs with both traditional and eyelid dormers, positioned on the axial lines of the building’s corps de logis; all roofs are clad with roof tiles. The front façade follows a symmetrical design and is set atop a tall plinth. In the centre there is a recessed portico preceded by fan-shaped stairs, flanked by two-axial avant-corps topped with two-storey Baroque Revival gables with arched copings flanked by volutes and crowned with pinnacles topped by decorative spheres. The lower parts of the gables are pierced by semi-circular triforia in arcaded niches separated by engaged columns, with oculi adorning the upper parts of the gables The corners of the avant-corps are accentuated with rusticated quoins. The rear façade follows a single-storey design with a three-axial pseudo-avant-corps in the middle, featuring modern, rectangular French windows at the bottom, with Diocletian windows positioned directly above. All façades are crowned with a profiled cornice. A terrace stretches in front of the eastern façade; there is also another, western terrace which, however, is a modern addition.

The park is located on the western and southern slopes of the hill. It consists of the lower park with a number of ponds located alongside the river, the section in the immediate vicinity of the manor house featuring a driveway and representational lawn as well as of the naturalistic forest garden wherein stands a 1863 cross dedicated to the fallen insurgents.

The site is open to hotel and restaurant guests (“Hotel Sanna”).

compiled by Bożena Stanek-Lebioda, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Lublin, 06-11-2014.

Bibliography

• Record sheet. Manor House. Wierzchowiska, compiled by Sikora-Terlecka A., Stanek-Lebioda B., 2000, Archive of the Regional Office for the Protection of Historical Monuments in Lublin; Archive of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Warsaw.
• Kopciowski D., Maraśkiewicz J., Rudnik S., Wiśniewska A., Żurawicka G., Laur Konserwatorski 2012, “Wiadomości Konserwatorskie Województwa Lubelskiego”, vol. 14, 2012, pp. 127, 232-234.
• Kaproń A., Wojciech Wiercieński i jego potomkowie, “Rocznik Lubelskiego Towarzystwa Genealogicznego”, vol. V, 2013 (2014), pp. 177-178.
• Niedźwiedź J., Ewidencja parku dworskiego w Wierzchowiskach, gm. Modliborzyce, pow. Janów Lubelski, Lublin 2001, typescript available at the Archive of the Regional Monuments Protection Office in Lublin.