Polesie, a land full of marshes and floodplains, was for centuries an inconvenient area for agriculture. The land occupied for cultivation was limited to small areas, located on the heights between marshy valleys. This was also reflected in the specific nature of the landed gentry residences there, which were more modest and less numerous than in the neighbouring Hrodna or Novogrudok districts. One of the few manor houses that have survived to this day in Byelorussian Polesia is the former residence of the Plater family, located in the Zapol suburb of Pinsk.

Manor house in Zapol
The wooden manor house in Zapol was built in the 1920s by Count Marian Broel-Plater. It is an eleven-axial, one-storey wooden building, covered with a hipped, broken roof with two pairs of attic windows in the front part (the so-called "goiter eyes"). The main entrance to the manor house leads through a classicist portico with four brick and white plastered columns. On the park side, the manor house has an analogous portico, plus two small side wings.

Architecturally, the manor house in Zapol is basically a copy of an old Polish manor house, making it seem at first glance that the building dates from the late 18th or early 19th century. This impression may be further enhanced by the poor state of preservation of the building, which several decades ago was converted into a multi-family residential building. Currently, part of the manor house is still inhabited, while another part stands empty and deteriorates. The surrounding park with old trees, which has not been maintained for decades, is also in a poor state.

Zapole is located near Pinsk, just 4 kilometres from the city centre. Before the Second World War, there was only a manor farm of this name here, with meadows and arable fields all around. It was separated from the last buildings of Pinsk (a complex of Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and military cemeteries, some of which are still preserved today) by 2 kilometres of open land. After the war, with the expansion of the city, the village of Zapole was created, which in time actually merged with the growing Pinsk, although officially it is not part of the city.

Landed property of Platerów
The Zapole manor until the First World War was part of a landed estate, covering an area of almost 10,000 hectares, largely of meadows and marshes located in the Jasiolda valley. The seat of the estate's owners was in the manor of Piaseczno (or Piaseczna; today it is part of the village of Ośnieżyce, 6 km away from Zapole). From 1872 they were the Plater family, who farmed here until 1939.

The classicist manor house in Piaseczno, situated on a hill above the Jasiolda valley, became the scene of heavy positional fighting during the First World War, as a result of which it was completely destroyed. Fortunately, the last owner of the manor, Marian Broel-Plater (1873-1951), managed to transport the valuable furnishings of the manor together with the archive and family heirlooms to Vilnius before the arrival of the front. After the 1920 war and the cutting off of the second family estate in Wieprza by the Polish-Lithuanian border, he decided to parcel out the ruined manor in Piaseczno and built a new residence in Zapol, conveniently located in the vicinity of Pinsk.

Marian Broel-Plater was a fairly well-known figure in the north-eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic, primarily as a representative of the 'Borderlanders', a group of conservative large landowners from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was one of the founders of the press organ of the "Bisons" - the Vilnius "Słowo", edited by Stanisław Cata-Mackiewicz. He died in 1951 in Vilnius, and a few months later his wife Irena Broel-Platerowa (1888-1952), née Hołyńska, also passed away. They were buried in a common grave in Vilnius' Bernardine Cemetery.