Summary:

The genesis of establishing manor farm complexes dates back to the 14th century. Within the historical process, they have been functioning for several hundred years. They were a basis of the Polish agriculture and farming under varying political, social and economic systems. They were arable farms, and constituted uniform and planned layouts. Manor farm complexes consisted of a manor and home farm. The manor was the residence of the proprietor; it was situated within a zone of parks and gardens beautified by small architecture objects. The home farm, owing to its role, gravitated towards a manor complex and arable lands, as well as towards village and markets. The whole spatial system was connected by an internal and external network of roads and paths. After the WW II in 1944, a decree on agricultural reform put an end to the traditional Polish manor farm complexes. A new agricultural economy of the postwar Poland was founded and organized on large land estates, which were all nationalized, i.e. those estates, which covered something between several dozen to several hundred hectares of arable land. Farms that were taken away from landowners had to be newly developed. There were three main development directions. The first referred to land estates taken away in their entirety and changed into some other organizational forms, such as: state-owned Agricultural Farmsteads (Państwowe Gospodarstwa Rolne), production co-operatives, experimental agricultural units, agricultural school complexes, and/or other national institutions running farming and agriculture-related activities. The second direction covered those manor farm complexes that were disconnected from their agricultural background; sadly, this developmental direction destroyed the entire, hitherto existing layout of a complex. The manor farm complexes in this group were changed into public utility institutions of higher rank such as museums, centres of creative work, social welfare homes for youth and adults, etc. The third developmental direction was connected with a far-reaching division of an entire complex: a manor farm complex was handed over to a local community with the purpose of arranging necessary services for the residents: community offices, schools, community centres of culture, community health centres, etc. Farm buildings were adjusted to new functions: storage areas (yards), warehouses, workshops, garages, etc. Manor parks became accessible to everybody. Arable acreage was parcelled out either wholly or partially. Small pieces of land were parcelled out and either handed over to peasants having undersized farms (in this way, many peasants expanded their arable areas) or to state-owned institutions to set up various investment objects on them. In the 1990s, the Polish economy system underwent essential transformation and became a free market economy. Along with this transformation, the remains of manor farm complexes underwent changes. Ex-landowners or their heirs began to struggle for their family land property to be returned to their families....