The manor house in Wysoka and its surroundings are a relic of a landed gentry residence with a very rich history. The building has retained its 17th-century body, vaults and stonework architectural details. Together with the remains of the park, it is a remarkable historical monument of great architectural and landscape value.

History

The village of Wysoka is situated at an altitude of 580 m a.s.l. in the east part of the Beskid Żywiecki Mountains, by the local road from Jordanów to Spytkowice. The village surfaces in historical records in 1581. It was probably established earlier, probably during the colonisation of the Jordan family of the Trąby coat of arms. The early Baroque manor house in Wysoka was erected in the first half of the 17th century, perhaps by the Zebrzydowski or Jordan family. The house always belonged to successive village owners. In Antoni Schneider’s Teki kept in the Wawel Castle archives, there is a document from 1793 confirming that the Stadnicki family sold the manor house to the Larisch family. In the document, the house is described as “lord’s residence, of stone and brick and lime mortar, with one floor with two chambers and two brick cellars below them.” In the period from 1848 to 1910, the building was uninhabited and used as a granary. In the years 1910-1912, after a major renovation, the house was again adapted for residential purposes. For example, a staircase was built, which has survived to this day, and the present living room on the ground floor was divided into four separate chambers. Robert Żeleński, the then owner of Wysoka, was a senator in the upper chamber of the Hungarian parliament. The manager of the estate, Aleksander Porlerecky, lived in the manor with his family. In September 1939, the manor house burnt down. It was rebuilt in 1942. The building received a new roof. In the kitchen on the ground floor, the vault was replaced with a wooden ceiling; the windows were replaced. After WW2, the manor house was adjusted to house a primary school. Later, until the 1980s, the property was used as a holiday and recreation facility by the Almatur Travel and Tourism Office run by the Socialist Union of Polish Students from Kraków. In 1988 the abandoned and ruined building was purchased by Anna and Antoni Pilch from Kraków. The new owners launched a general renovation or rather reconstruction project of the site. Many years after, the monument is in a good technical condition, but renovation works are still underway. The Old Polish Lute Foundation, registered in 1993, is seated in the manor house. Its goals is to “study old culture and music, promote their timeless values and protect the heritage and monuments of old Polish spiritual and material culture.”

Description

The manor house is a brick building erected with quarry stone and partly brick, plastered. The corners of the building are reinforced with buttresses. Three buttresses are original structures; the north-east one was added in the 1970s, probably to replace the old one. The symmetrical building has a rectangular plan. It has two floors and a basement. The rectangular shape of the building is covered by a high hip roof of ceramic tiles with four extensions in the roof planes. The entrance to the building is located in the central part of the front façade. On the axis of the entrance, there is a spacious hall. To the left from the hall, there is a living room and kitchen on the right. At the back of the hall, there is a staircase leading up the first floor. The hall and the living room have barrel vaults with lunettes; the kitchen has a wooden beam ceiling. The rooms have ceramic flooring. The single-bay interior layout on the ground floor is consistent with the original design. The entrances to the rooms on the ground floor have modest, stone, early Baroque framing. Wide, two-flight, quarter turn wooden stairs lead up to the upper floor. The layout of the rooms on the first floor is more complex than below and has been re-designed to fit the owners’ needs. The rooms have wooden beam ceilings. During the last renovation, new flooring was also made. The loft contains small guest rooms. The owners gathered various furnishings in the house, often of a historic value. These include utility items from the 19th century, e.g. Orava chests and benches in the living room, which also has a reconstructed fireplace. Under the building, there are two large and deep cellars divided by massive pillars, barrel vaulted with lunettes. The basement floors are paved with ceramic tiles brought in the 1990s from one of the renovated historic churches in Przemyśl. Contemporary wooden utility buildings are located in the vicinity of the manor house. There is also a 19th-century, historical wooden log building relocated by the owners from Podwilk in Orava. Originally, it was used as a school, but now the building serves as a guest house for guests visiting the Wysoka manor. There are still legible former park layouts around the house. The older one was a terraced geometric garden encircled by trees, originally a multi-quarter “Italian garden.” The later garden design is also legible as an unconstrained landscape park.

By arrangement with the owner.

Author of the note Roman Marcinek, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 22/10/2014

Bibliography

• Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce: Vol. 1: Województwo Krakowskie, ed. J. Szablowski, Warszawa 1953
• T. Chrzanowski, M. Kornecki, Sztuka Ziemi Krakowskiej, Kraków, 1982
• M. Kornecki, A. Fischinger, J. Lepiarczyk, T. Chrzanowski, Zabytki architektury i budownictwa w Polsce, no. 7: Województwo Krakowskie, Warszawa 1971.
• J. Smólski, Zabytki na trasach turystycznych województwa krakowskiego, Kraków, 1975