Hungary - Wooden bell-towers in the Upper Tisza-Region

The region of the Upper Tisza encompasses, in a broader sense, the plains section of the upper part of the Tisza, above its great bend, which extends, beside Szatmár and Bereg, to the historical counties of Szabolcs, Ung, Ugocsa and Máramaros, the flat region beside the Tisza River. In a narrower sense, the region of the Upper Tisza is the part of the above area that is within the current borders of Hungary. Written documents related to timber architecture were preserved from the territory of the historical Hungary – encompassing the Carpathian Basin – as early as from the age of Saint László. The history of timber architecture of the Trans-Tisza Region may be followed back to the beginning of the 14th century, albeit no relics survived from that time in their physical reality. Timber architecture and the building of wooden towers really began to flourish in the 17th to 18th centuries. Even former stone churches were often rebuilt from wood in the country, impoverished due to the devastation during the Turkish subjugation. Apart from this, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation gave a big impetus to the use of wood in construction because the congregations driven out from their churches, first the Catholics then those in the Reformed Churches, built their new church buildings from wood. Church construction was often even regulated by (county or squire, etc.) law, too, with the sizes, shapes and materials to be used prescribed in detail. Out of different considerations (e.g. often in order to express the "temporariness" or "tolerance" applied to certain congregations, and because of its relative cheapness, simple procurability, and fast-to-use nature) the material most often permitted and used was wood. In a region that practically lacked any stone usable for construction certain conditions made it easier to access the necessary amount of wood of the required quality: the closeness of the forests of the Carpathian Mountains and the availability of the Tisza River as a watercourse for transportation (floating of wood). This use of wood as building material is a convincing example of the economical as well as ecological practice of the local communities, which adapted, to a large extent, to the conditions of the environment, in a manner that was clearly necessary at the time of the construction of belfries and that is cabaple of serving as an outstanding example for our age, too.