SMALL VILLAGES AND MANORS: GEOGRAPHICAL SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Abstract
In this study we try to uncover the similarities and differences between small villages and manors. These settlement forms have significant role in Hungarian settlement network. The main analytical viewpoints are the next: history, research opportunities, settlement geographical explanations, development options, locality, volume differences, social and economic syndromes, functional differentiations after regime change and morphological characteristics. Both small villages and manors began to decline after the Second World War and both of them are mainly located in the western part of the country.
Small villages are traditional settlements of Hungary. Nowadays every third village has less than 500 inhabitants. The decline of their population is not a new process; it started almost 50-100 years ago. Before the political regime change most of the studies deals with small villages as homogeneous group (unfavourable demographic processes, bad features of social, institutional and traffic systems, etc.) After 1990s the differentiation of them has become clear. The socio-economic development rate of them, the life quality of the local population are determined by the geographical location. The increasing of number of small villages is going to continue but their future are still in doubt, similarly to the manors.
Manors are usually not independent municipalities, but mostly occupied the outer areas of some towns and villages. Most of the manors could be found in Transdanubia. The leader utility is the agriculture, but among others we found manors with industrial, sanitary, tourism functions also. Manors in their initial form appeared in the early or mid-13th century, but their appearance in large numbers only took place in the 16th century. After World War II, following the distribution of lands in 1945 manor as a piece of land lost its reason for existence and survived as a settlement type. Parallel to this, their decline and decay started. The utilisation of the former demesne lands and their buildings – provided that they still existed – brought a rather strong differentiation of their functions. . Their future is uncertain, and their number is continuously decreasing. Their transformation will continue and this “metamorphosis” may not only mean a changed morphology and functions but eventually even a total physical annihilation.
