The Wooden Architecture Museum

We are lucky with our sponsors – the International Organization for Migration (the IOM) – who visit our Refugee Center regularly and provide us with great help by psychological and juridical consultations, purchase of necessary household items and supermarket gift cards, and a Polish course. Our Polish teacher has organized several outings for us. We were shown downtown Siedlce, as well as the regional museum and the diocese museum. In July, we were kindly taken to the tiny village of Nova Sucha to see a unique property which serves as a museum now - the Wooden Architecture Museum. Since there are no direct buses to Nova Sucha, the IOM ordered a tourist bus for our group of twenty persons.
Nova Sucha is located in the Węgrów County in the eastern part of the Masovian Voivodeship. This area belongs to the so-called "Green Lungs of Poland". More than half of the county's area is occupied by protected areas.

Municipal Manor from around 1850 from Siedlce, Nova Sucha

Municipal Manor from around 1850 from Siedlce, Nova Sucha

There are numerous historical sites and tourist attractions in the Węgrów County. One of such trips is the "Trail of Manors and Palaces". It includes a visit to the skansen in Nowa Sucha located in the municipality of Grębków, between the town of Grębków and the village of Kopcie, on the banks of the Kostrzyn River, which is a tributary of the Liwiec. The village is in the immediate vicinity of a large complex of ponds, near a beautiful forest with a unique larch alley.
Nova Sucha is not far from large urban agglomerations such as Warsaw and Siedlce, thus, it can be included in your weekend tourism.
Currently, there are two parts in the village: one is a manor - the seat of the former heirs of the Cieszkowski family in Nova Sucha, with the area of the former farm, and the other - the village proper – Stara Sucha – which is closer to the village Kopiec known for its exquisite church.
Since the museum area is private property, the tour should be agreed upon by phone with the museum guide, which our Polish teacher did. The museum includes an old wooden manor house and a complex of historic wooden buildings. The full name of the museum is the Museum of Wooden Architecture of the Siedlce Region. Its core is a large larch manor house erected in 1743 on the initiative of Ignacy Cieszkowski (1704-1787), the marshal of the Livonian land in the Dzików confederation in 1734.

Ignacy Cieszkowski (1704-1787), the marshal of the Livonian land, Nova Sucha

The manor is a one-storey Baroque building

The manor as seen from the garden / Approaching the old manor

The manor is a one-storey Baroque building with corner alcoves at the entrance, covered with a high shingle roof cap, and decorated with a classicist arcaded portico added in 1843 and completely panelled in the same year. The original interior layout includes a tract of rooms on the garden side, with fragments of original decorative paintings on the floor and walls.

Our group during the tour

The inscription over the entrance to the drawing-room reads, Haec domus odit non probos - This house hates the unrighteous.

During our guided tour of the mansion

In 1787, the manor was graced by the visit of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. In 1814, August Cieszkowski (1814-1894), an outstanding philosopher and economist, was born here. You can see his memorial stone to the left of the entrance road. The plaque on the stone reads, “August Cieszkowski, philosopher and economist, was born in Sucha on 12.IX.1814”.

As you enter the museum, you can see an inscription over the porch. It reads, Sub veteri tectu sed parentali - Under the old but parental roof. There is another inscription over the entrance to the drawing-room, which reads, Haec domus odit non probos - This house hates the unrighteous.

Visiting the kitchen aroused great interest among ladies

Visiting the kitchen/The only surviving authentic piece of furniture from the mansion

The old furniture in the mansion (brought from elsewhere)

The manor's drawing-room, Nova Sucha

The authentic ceiling of the mansion in Nova Sucha

According to our museum guide, the museum area was used as a scene for historical movies, as well as for weddings and other events.
We found out that Prof. Felicjan Cieszkowski-Dembiński (1901-1981), the last pre-war owner of Sucha, had been an excellent farmer, agrotechnician, and specialist in detailed plant cultivation. He made great contributions to the cultivation of oilseeds, mainly rapeseed. Thanks to his research, the cultivation and yield of rapeseed in Poland have increased significantly. In addition, he was an economist, a professor at the Higher School of Agriculture in Poznań, a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a "benefactor of the church in Kopce", as it is written on the commemorative plaque in this church.

The old furniture in the mansion, Nova Sucha

Medals of Professor August Cieszkowski

The old mantelpiece

After the Cieszkowski-Dembiński family left Sucha in 1945 as a result of the so-called agrarian reform, the manor fell into ruin. And it was in the second half of the 1980s that it was bought by Prof. Marek Kwiatkowski (1930-2016), an art historian, long-time director of the Royal Łazienki in Warsaw, together with his wife Maria née Marczewski, who renovated the building. Around it, on an area of about 10 hectares, they also created an open-air museum of wooden architecture, bringing numerous historic buildings from the region, mainly Mazovia and Podlasie.

According to the interview of Jolanta Karczewska, the long-time curator of the Museum of Architecture of the Siedlce Region in Nowa Sucha, and Piotr Szymon Łoś from RDC Polish Radio, the Museum of Wooden Architecture of the Siedlce Region in Nowa Sucha is currently receiving visitors mostly in May-October, according to a previous notification by phone. Now it is still private property, but formal and legal activities are underway, aimed at creating a public museum facility in Sucha, in accordance with the will of Prof. Marek Kwiatkowski. The Cieszkowski manor was guided by Jolanta Karczewska, curator of the Museum of Architecture of the Siedlce Region in Nowa Sucha, for about thirty years.

The authentic ornament in the mansion, Nova Sucha

The master bedroom, Nova Sucha

The master bedroom, Nova Sucha

Ms.Jolanta Karczewska explained further that after the war, the employees of the State Agricultural Farm had lived here. In 1988, the destroyed building was purchased by Maria and Marek Kwiatkowski, who began an intensive and thorough reconstruction of the monument. The building received a new roof, made of planed chips, mostly new window and door joinery, except for the preserved and restored five original pairs of doors. The old wooden floors were preserved, where possible. After several difficult years of construction and restoration works, it was finally possible to restore the former appearance of the manor both from the outside and inside.

The current interior furnishings consist of a variety of Biedermeier and eclectic furniture from the nineteenth century, paintings (portraits of nobility and landscapes painted mainly by Piotr F. Marczewski and Marek Kwiatkowski), watercolours, drawings, small sculptures and objects of applied art recreating the character and atmosphere of the Polish noble court.
For several years, historic wooden buildings have been collected, moved from near and far, thus saved from annihilation. After restoration and furnishing, on October 14, 1993, on the 250th anniversary of the manor's existence, it was ceremoniously "reopened" and given the rank of a museum object.
The museum has a lot of houses and outbuildings, among them:

• Manor house (forester's house) with cellars
• Ice Room (cellar next to the manor)
• Stable
• Organist from about the mid-nineteenth century from Mokobody
• Bell tower from the end of the eighteenth century from Miedzna
• Rectory from 1900 from nearby Grębków
• The Dutch windmill from Ostrówek, which has preserved the old mechanism
• The Rectory Inn from around 1900 from Skrzeszewo on the Bug
• Municipal Manor from around 1850 from Siedlce
• Granary from the mid-twentieth century from Zbuczyn

• Khałupy - one from around 1860 (where, among others, Fr. Stanisław Brzóska was supposed to be hiding) from the village of Szaniawy Matysy, the other from 1888 from Jagodne, where a peasant's chamber and a chamber with work tools are arranged
• Barn from around 1900 from Polków
• Maneż from the end of the nineteenth century from the vicinity of Ostrołęka
• A vicar from 1840 from Garwolin
• Owczarnia from Sadowne

  

• Granary from Siedlce
• Classicist manor house from 1825 from Rudzienek near Kołbiela
• Town manor house from Siedlce from the middle of the 19th century.
• Municipal buildings (next to the pond, behind the Inn) from the nineteenth century from Mińsk Mazowiecki now belong to other owners
• Wooden chapel designed by Marek Kwiatkowski
• Forge with coach house

I peeped into the window of one of the old peasant's houses and saw two old exhibitions of clay figures there: "September 1939" and "We are from burned out villages".