Historical outline: village and parish

The village was first mentioned in the 16th century. At that time Queen Bona granted the village aldermanship to Jan Wysoczański. In the 18th century Borynia was among the villages placed under the pastoral care of Jesuit missionaries from nearby Turka. In 1780 the Austrian authorities brought German colonists to the area. In the area of their settlement, the first Roman Catholic church was established, which initially served as a public chapel and from 1902 gained the status of an exposition. Between the wars, the outpost became an independent parish. By the end of the 1930s it included as many as 36 villages, and there were three public chapels in the villages of Tarnawa Niżna (1903), Sianki (1907) and Wysock Vyshne (1928).

Parish church

The building was constructed in 1877-1879 thanks to contributory funds, but also top-down support (including the imperial treasury). The church was consecrated in 1879 and took the name of St Roch. A fire broke out in 1902, severely destroying the interior and much of the furnishings. In the following years, the interior was repaired and necessary items were collected. In 1917, the authorities confiscated two of the three bells. Another fire occurred in 1926, consuming, among other things, the main altar. The author of the new altar was the local forester Schmidt. The 1930s saw further renovations.

Under the domination of the USSR, the church was turned into a kolkhoz warehouse. In 1965 it was demolished in connection with the construction of a new highway. As Rafał Quirini-Popławski writes in his study, between 1994 and 1995 the revived community erected a wooden chapel on the site of the former church, which functions as a branch of the Roman Catholic parish in Turka.

The building was located on a watershed ridge, next to the road from Turka to Uzhok Pass. The church was surrounded by a small cemetery. The temple was built of brick and stone, on a stone foundation. It consisted of a rectangular nave and a narrower, shorter chancel (most probably in the form of an apse), which faced south-east. To the north-west was a square tower. The entrance to the church was located in its ground floor. The interior was covered with pseudo barrel vaults, wooden and plastered. The roofs were covered with shingles.

Branch church

Since 1928, the Polish inhabitants of the village had been trying to build a second religious building, in the centre of Borynia. A decade later, the building committee decided to erect the building on the basis of the design of the temple in Boryslav-Hubichy, whose author was Wawrzyniec Dayczak. Formal approval for the construction was not given until January 1939. Unfortunately, the work was interrupted by the war.

The building is located in the centre of the village. It was built of brick and concrete (in the structural parts). It has a single nave, with a narrower and lower semicircular closed chancel, which faces south-west. There are two vestries attached to the altar area and an additional choir bay to the three-bay nave, flanked by narrow annexes. A shallow vestibule was planned at the front. Two square chapels were attached to the sides at the junction of the nave and the altar area. From the filial church, a stub of the walls and a fragment of the façade articulation have survived to the present day. Under the domination of the USSR, the building was converted into a cinema.

Name: St. Roch Parish Church and Subsidiary Church in Borynia

Name in use today: Parish church of St. Roch and former branch church in Borynia

Division: architecture

Locality: Ukraine, district: Lviv, locality: Borynia

Author: unknown/ based on a design by Varzyniec Dayczak

Date of construction: 1879 /1939

Technical data: Brick objects