Articles --> Ziemia Kwidzyńska

Spatial and functional layout

An absolute majority of the buildings have been based on a plan of an extended rectangle. A type which has the main entrance in the gable wall, from which there extends a hall, as it takes place in Żuławy Wiślane⁷², has not been found. The main entrance is always situated in the longitudinal wall. A layout with a double walkway dominates (il. 19). In the oldest examples from the 18th century, the entry hall from the side of the yard is considerably wider, with one or two windows providing light. In the other walkway, it turns into a corridor leading to the exit door to the field. In case of the homestead of Zwanzigerweide, the big hall has been divided into two smaller rooms. The main hall is communicating in the same walkway with the main representative chamber, always provided with light via windows in both walls. In the other walkway, the hall leads to the kitchen. Behind it, there is one long chamber, a chamber and a larder or two chambers. Always, at least one chamber communicates with the main chamber on the first walkway. In the hall, there is also an entry to the cowshed, stairs to the attic and one or two chambers destined for domestic servants. In the cowshed, there may also be a separate room for a farmhand (il. 20).
This layout would practically not change until the 20th century. In the newer homesteads, only a bigger number of chambers and larders was separated. Also the detached houses were characterized by a layout including a hall running straight through the house and a big chamber in one of the corners.
An interesting example is homestead Wielkie Nebrowo 24, which was used as an inn (il.19e, 21). It is has a typical layout, as described above, except that the big chamber was used as an inn room, while the chamber and larder in the second walkway were used as the innkeeper's flat. Unfortunately, it is unknown whether the house had been planned as an inn or was adjusted to that function later on.
An important element of the spatial and functional arrangement is also the hearth and the smoke exhaust system. In all the homesteads, it consisted of a black kitchen and a bottle chimney. The entry to the black kitchen always was from the kitchen. At the hall or in a room next to the second walkway there appeared a window. An element which also frequently appeared in bottle chimneys was a smoking chamber in the attic. The attic itself, apart from its utility character, often had separate residential chambers, such as, for example, in homestead Mątowskie Pastwiska 30.
A somewhat different arrangement than that of the homesteads described here can be found in the house for farm workers in homestead Mątowskie Pastwiska 30 (il.22). Half of the space is occupied by one big chamber accessible via an entry from the gable and ridge wall. The other part is divided into a chamber and a small hall communicating with the yard and the black kitchen room in the corner. It was not the original layout of the building. Most probably, because of the character of its inhabitants, it had no kitchen at all, and a part of it could be used as a utility room or even perhaps as a small cowshed⁷³.
The spatial and functional arrangement as we know it from the oldest buildings dating back to the 2nd half of the 18th century is characterized by a double walkway layout of rooms, with hall running across the whole house, a big chamber in one of the walkways and a kitchen in the other. This system is similar to the one prevailing in Żuławy Wiślane and in the buildings erected farther on the Lower Vistula. It was not modified throughout the whole 19th century, even in detached houses.

⁷² J. Domino, op. cit., s. 67.
⁷³ See footnote 69.