Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(2):174-179

Land books as a source for understanding the nature and form of local development in Český Brod and elsewhere

Vladimír Jakub Mrvík

Land books are a valuable and essentially irreplaceable source primarily for analyzing the historical development of individual homes and other issues of historical topography and for analyzing the social and demographic image of the investigated location. Land books often contain more than simply dry legal and financial data, especially containing comprehensive descriptions ("šacuňky") of buildings that were part of the disposition of the respective property. For the Český Brod area (resp. the former estate of Kostelec nad Černými lesy) and the adjacent areas we can thus comprehensively reconstruct the character and form of local development at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries for entire villages.
The territory defined as the historical court district of Český Brod has always been very fertile and in folk architecture can be characterized as an area where the construction of the "Middle Elbe House" was applied. The older Middle Elbe House was timbered. The timbered perimeter walls of an Elbe House were usually equipped with a fireproof and insulating layer of clay screed spread from the outside (aka "House in Fur"). In the Český Brod area, the chamber type of house was fully applied. The second type of house, known as the "cowshed" type, according to the aforementioned descriptions of settlements in the land books from around 1800, would be found around Český Brod in only a few cases (e.g. Žhery no. 17) at the lowest social rural strata.
"Šacuňky" (pl.) embodied in land records are not only a valuable resource for understanding the form and character of rural development, but also for structures in small towns and villages of agrarian and semi-agrarian character, since this kind of settlement combines the issue of both urban and rural topography basically in their entirety. As specific examples in the text, the author mentions discovered "šacuňky" from the 18th century for the town of Kostelec nad Černými lesy which is located in the historic Český Brod district, both for the outskirts of the urban area and directly on the square. They clearly demonstrate a representation of a wide range of housing development in semi-agrarian settlements concerning the applied building material as well as in terms of layout - timbered and stone houses are both typically found here (and combinations thereof), but with half-timbered floors (although here it was an ethnically pure Czech region), structures of classical chamber arrangement and their variations in the form of a three-spaced double-tract.

Keywords: Folk architecture; economic and social history; rural history; early modern period; Český Brod; Kostelec nad Černými lesy; patrimonial management

Published: June 1, 2016  Show citation