Good Harku
The Harku (Hark) estate was a estate in Harku , in the parish of Keila .
history
The Harku (Hark) manor belonging to the Livonian Order was first mentioned in 1372. In the Middle Ages, this stone manor was the residence of the Deputy Commander of Tallinn . In 1679 the estate passed into the ownership of the Uexküll family , who erected the originally two-storey baroque main building at the beginning of the 18th century .
During the Northern War , after the siege of Tallinn in 1710, a surrender and peace treaty was concluded in September 1710 in the Harku manor house between the Russian army on the one hand and the Swedish army and the local noble families on the other.
This treaty ended the Northern War in Estonia and the King of Sweden ceded the territory of Estonia to Russia, followed by the 200-year reign of the Russian Tsar . Estonia has not turned into a typical Russian province, but has retained extensive autonomy.
The von Budberg family , who took possession of the estate in 1755, had the manor building rebuilt in the early Classicist style in the 1770s . In 1836 the estate was transferred to the von Ungern-Sternberg family , who in 1875 gave the manor building its neo-renaissance form, which has been preserved to this day. The building was also lengthened in the main axis.
Hermann von Harpe went down in history as the last lord of the Harku estate, which has had several owners since 1892. He bought the property in the summer of 1912 for 300,000 rubles and in the autumn of that year sold part of the property to 158 farmers. Von Harpe was the owner until the estate was nationalized in 1919.
After the founding of the Republic of Estonia, i.e. in the 1920s and 1930s, several reformatory institutions were established at Harku Manor : a reformatory for underage criminals (the Harku reformatory for boys with criminal tendencies or the Harku column), the Harku prison for adult prisoners, the Harku labor camp for idlers and drinkers.
The prisoners were supposed to work in the peat bog and in the fields of the estate. The livestock and agricultural products provided additional food for prisoners. Peat production was particularly profitable in Harku because the state needed large quantities of fuel peat. In 1924 a prisoner strike took place in Harku.
The Institute for Experimental Biology, which belonged to the Academy of Sciences, has been located there since 1957.
Today the University of Environmental Sciences is the owner of the estate.
architecture
The Harku estate has a diverse architectural history background. The current manor building dates from the beginning of the 18th century. During the modernization carried out in 1870 two wings were added to the two-story representative building.
Two slightly protruding side risalits , which are the width of a window, and the central risalit, which is as wide as three windows, give the facade of the main building a beautiful expression. They are all adorned with double pilasters and historicist pediment triangles. At the rear, the central risalit protrudes a little more from the facade and it has a classicist gable triangle. On the second floor all gables have arched windows. There is a small veranda at the right end of the building.
In the vicinity of the approach road, a retaining wall in the classicist style was built, which is reminiscent of a fortress and has decorative towers, as well as the farm buildings with high stepped gables made of limestone, near the ruins of the order castle , which probably dates from the 14th century .
The outbuildings include a cattle breeding complex with historicist gables, as well as the ruins of a greenhouse reminiscent of a medieval castle with two towers in the park (both date from the end of the 19th century).
The granary and the horse-drawn carriage shed that line the long space in front of the main building are still there. The façades of the two buildings mentioned are decorated with arched openings. A number of other outbuildings have also been preserved, although they have been rebuilt a lot.
Attractions
Harku Manor Park
The large park with an area of 20 hectares was originally designed in the regular style. In front of the front facade of the main building, a lawned area lined with a ring road was formed and the stepped terraces ran from the garden facade down to the ponds. The free design of the park has been preserved to this day and a free arrangement of clearings and groups of trees is characteristic of it.
The design of the long clearing in the southeast of the main building is particularly successful. The rear edge of the two hundred meter long clearing is planted with deciduous trees, on the sides connecting groups of trees with different colors and treetop shapes are used, on the edge of these groups of trees grow low flowering shrubs. The use of dense groups of fir trees with dark green treetops, the so-called backdrops, increases the depth of the clearing.
In the middle of the park there is the manor pond with an area of 3 hectares, which has a limestone base and five small islands and which has been preserved from the former relict lake. Peter Ludvig Constantin von Ungern-Sternberg had the lake redesigned into a pond in the 19th century. The soil thrown out during the expansion and deepening was piled up in the middle of the pond, creating five small islands, which were connected by bridges and decorated with various sculptures.
The pride of the Harku Manor Park is a tree that has held the title of the thickest sycamore maple in Estonia for more than a quarter of a century . In 1976 the girth of the two branches of the split tree was two meters, but in the summer of 2004 one branch of the tree was broken, the girth of the other branch was 320 cm at chest height.
gallery
Coordinates: 59 ° 23 ′ 7 ″ N , 24 ° 34 ′ 39 ″ E