Urși wooden church
The wooden church Urși (municipality Popești ) in Vâlcea County , Northern Oltenia in Romania is an Orthodox church built in the 18th century and is dedicated to the Annunciation and the Archangel Michael . In the 19th century the church was painted inside and out. The church is included in the Romanian Monuments List. However, the structural condition is worrying, based on current photos on the Romanian Wikipedia page of this church. The small church is surrounded by the village cemetery.
history
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Names of the donors
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Names of painters
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The year 1757 was passed down as the construction date of the wooden church of Urși. Above the entrance gate is a chronogram written in Cyrillic letters for the year 7303, according to today's calendar it corresponds to the years 1794–1795. This period is attributed to the "old founder" - Ion Danciu and a priest Constandin. Research into early building history is made difficult by incomplete or missing written records. The reports on the second construction phase are more precise. In 1843 the church was restored and repainted. Nicolae Milcoveanu and his family were mentioned as the new founder; he was apparently a wealthy land tenant; The land in the village remained in the possession of Dintr-un Lemn . The names of the painters were also given on the church facade, they are Gheorghe, Nicolae and Ion. In 1850 the church was damaged by an earthquake. In 1930 today's village church “St. John the Baptist ”, the wooden church on the edge of the cemetery is locked and only used for funerals and celebrations, the building is falling into structural disrepair, the last repair was carried out in 1943. As part of his art-historical studies, Andrei Panoiu visits the village and makes a description. As a result of the increasing interest in the church, the pastor of the village tried to apply for funds for a church restoration from the state authorities, but this was prevented by the state bureaucracy. Year after year, the pastor procured a few sheets of roofing felt from the village as emergency protection. In 1988 the damage to the roof and the consequential damage inside were already clearly visible. The 1989 revolution in Romania enabled the church to pay more attention to the preservation of its buildings. In 2001 the Romanian government passed the Law on the Protection of Historic Monuments. In 2004 the church was designated as a cultural monument. In July 2009, a group of art students from the Bucharest State University conducted research on the church. In 2009 a support group of the Romanian Chamber of Architects, the Romanian Peasant Museum and the State University of Bucharest as well as the association PERT Verband 37 was formed . In October 2009, government resolution 426 announced measures for the restoration of the Urși wooden church in the official gazette, which were also supplemented with an investment framework for tourism projects (street of wooden architecture). The local government offers the restoration project as a publicly funded construction measure, but cannot find a suitable contractor. The planned funding was returned to the state budget unused except for the necessary funds for the damage documentation. In June 2012 a wooden part inside the church broke, and the danger of collapse caused the civil engineer Viorel Iordan to work with a group of construction workers to secure the church in an emergency.
architecture
The primary building material for this church is wood. The load-bearing timbers as well as filler boards, windows and the entrance door were built in the traditional rustic construction. Despite its narrowness, the relatively narrow entrance has two double doors and a canopy supported on carved wooden columns. A partition wall separates a narrow anteroom from the sacred interior. The entire interior is vaulted by a wooden barrel painted with biblical scenes. The front sides were provided with icons arranged closely together. The side walls and the partition show images of saints. In keeping with the size of the room, only small windows were added to the walls. The floor was covered with floorboards. When building the church walls, plaster was applied to smooth the walls. These were then whitewashed in several layers. The traditional roof covering consisted of multi-layered nailed wooden shingles, which were covered with strips of thin, unsanded tar paper during the last roof repair carried out .
painting
In accordance with Orthodox customs, both the interior of the church (altar - naos - vestibule) and the outer walls were painted. The painting technique used in the style of fresco painting is seldom used for wooden picture carriers , since the wood, due to the climatic fluctuations, stresses the painting surface much more than a solid stone wall. During construction, the layers of mortar Arriccio and Intonaco were applied directly to the pre-processed wooden boards. The required adhesion of the painting ground (plaster layer) was improved by a large number of ax blows, thus roughening and enlarging the wood-lime plaster contact area. The pigments were applied to the still damp lime plaster in water.
The motifs used follow the classic picture program of the Byzantine tradition.
restoration
In 2010, civil engineer Viorel Iordan and a group of builders began emergency securing the church. The restoration project was also approved by the Romanian Orthodox Church and scientifically supervised by the State Art Academy in Bucharest. In order to renovate the roof of the building, which was in danger of collapsing, a wooden roofed scaffolding structure was built around the church. The layers of tar cardboard that had been applied in the last few decades and the roof skin made of weathered wooden shingles were completely removed in order to be able to examine the condition of the rafters and the wooden ceiling construction.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Website of the Romanian Ministry of Culture, List of Monuments (status 2010), the church is on page 2350 under No. 691 ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 8 MB)
- ↑ Garoafa, Dumitru: Comuna Popeşti. Studiu istoric și documente , editura Steaua Nordului, p. 63
- ↑ Pănoiu, Andrei (1971). Arhitectura bisericilor de lemn din Țara Românească
- ↑ File number VL-II-I-09954)
Coordinates: 44 ° 59 ′ 37.3 " N , 24 ° 5 ′ 33.4" E