Zdunowo Manor

The manor complex in Zdunowo, Zdunowo, Poland, was built between 1905 and 1910 for Stanisław and Cecylia Jaworowscy, members of the Polish landed gentry, and erected in a late Baroque idiom adapted to early twentieth-century tastes and linked to the Vienna studio Fellner and Hellmer. Constructed at the opening of the century, the residence and its grounds represented a modern country seat for a private family and later became a focal point for changing social and political uses in the region.

Work on the house began in the first decade of the 1900s under local building supervision, following a design associated with the Vienna atelier and executed in a late Baroque manner updated for the period. In the years between the world wars the estate passed into the hands of Piotr Domański; the property had entered his household as his wife’s dowry, and the complex remained a private residence through the interwar era.

During the German occupation in World War II the building was pressed into medical service and used as a hospital. After the war, in 1946, the State Treasury assumed ownership. The manor then served a sequence of institutional roles: housing Soviet forces, later the Polish Army, and then operating as a State Children’s Home. For a short time in 1957–1958 the premises accommodated a Basic Agricultural School.

On 1 June 1979 the manor and its park were placed under legal heritage protection, but in the years that followed the property fell into vacancy and physical decline. In June 1989 a private family bought the run-down estate and began repair work; three years later the neighbouring State Agricultural Farm was wound up. New owners arrived in 2001 and carried out major structural interventions, including excavation around the building, strengthening of the foundations, thermal insulation, and the installation of perimeter drainage.

In October 2002 a major fire destroyed the roof, the ceiling above the ground floor, the wooden staircases, and much of the original door and window joinery. Restoration continued after the blaze, with replacement of the roof, reconstruction of façades and window frames, and rebuilding of the ceilings above the ground-floor level. In April 2005 Małgorzata and Dariusz Chwiejczak acquired the estate, finished the exterior restoration, and added a new formal front entrance and an extensive garden terrace. Work before and after the fire was carried out by a regional construction firm. Door fittings, parquet floors with inlaid patterns, and stucco interior decorations were conserved and repaired with oversight from the regional conservator of monuments, and in April 2009 the owners received an award from the national conservator for their revalorization of the property. The manor now operates as a boutique hotel and caters to conferences, receptions, family gatherings, and workshops.