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Roman Catholic Cemetery in Ołyka

ID: dok-000523-P

Roman Catholic Cemetery in Ołyka

Cemetery with Polish gravestone monuments and a chapel. Documentation (69 sheets) and a conservation opinion (stored in the IOC) have been produced for the cemetery. Information about the cemetery published (see bibliography).

The cemetery in Ołyka is located in its southern part, on the right side of the road to Metelno. It occupies an area of approximately 2 ha. Based on inscriptions, one may conclude that the cemetery was established in the 1830s. The last surviving gravestone is dated 1941.

According to Zbigniew Hauser, although the cemetery is heavily damaged, traces of its former glory are still visible. A fragment of the cemetery wall with a neo-Gothic brick gate with a dodecahedron, ogival portal, decorated with an arcaded frieze and topped with turrets - the higher central one and two lower ones on either side - has been preserved.

The largest building in the cemetery is the cemetery chapel, devastated inside and out and without a roof, which according to Hauser is probably of the Radziwiłł family, but on the map is marked as the Nowowiejscy Chapel. The chapel's façade has survived, with a portal with an arch of the "donkey's back" type framed by two columns and a pediment with a semicircular closed dormer. In the interior of the chapel, architectural details remain in the form of frames of epitaphs that no longer exist and a relief decoration in the form of crossed spears.

The author lists 36 tombstones with inscriptions, including two unnamed ones, besides an unnamed sarcophagus with the signature "L. Rudnicki "and a stately tomb, as well as unnamed "Podolia" crosses. There is also one gravestone in the cemetery with an inscription in Ukrainian from 1816.

Most damaged are the monumental monuments near the chapel: Fabina née Teleżyńska Milowiczowa (d. 1933) and Henka Milowiczówna (d. 1905), which may have constituted a whole, but the disjointed form does not allow this to be clearly established. Henka Milowiczówna's child's gravestone is distinguished by its poetic, elaborate inscription. Many other tombstones are also heavily devastated. On the other hand, the best preserved is the tombstone from 1898 of Father Jozef Tomkowicz, prelate of Lutsk-Zytomiersk, in the shape of an obelisk on rocks, and the tombstone of the Kożuchowski family decorated with an acroterion and a bas-relief branch. The tombstone of Count Kazimierz Miączyński, unfortunately not preserved in its entirety, draws attention to the diversity of the stone: each part is of a different type of marble.

Many people of higher social status were buried in the cemetery, as can be seen from the content of the inscriptions, the coat-of-arms motifs and the grandeur of the forms of the monuments and the choice of materials.

Bibliography:
  • „Cmentarze polskie poza granicami kraju” , raport, oprac. B. Gutowski, Warszawa 2022 (maszynopis).
  • Hauser Zbigniew, „Podróże po cmentarzach Ukrainy”, t. IV, „Województwa: wołyńskie, podolskie, bracławskie i kijowskie”, Kraków 2009, s. 104-108.
Author:
Bartłomiej Gutowski, Alicja Czuber-Filonik
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