Abstract

The presented article deals with the methods of heating households in former Polish Livonia (Latgale, one of historical regions of modern-day Latvia, which between second half of the sixteenth century until 1772 were a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and since 1677 – the Livonian Voivodeship [Duchy]) using the example of both nobles’ manors and peasant homes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The subject of the analysis were the first literary presentations of stoves used in this area in the works of Kazimierz Bujnicki, Stefania Ulanowska, Gustaw Manteuffel in the context of heating devices used in both Northern and Western Europe and Russia, and followed by fragments of an account from a journey to Livonia conducted by an English tourist – Mary Holderness of 1823. All forms of heating used in Latgale were described here in detail, starting from the most exclusive tiled stoves (used, among others, in the palaces of the Broel-Plater family) of unique shapes (e.g. a shape of a pyramid, in the Szadurski family palace in Małnowo), to more or less decorative fireplaces or typical functional brick, bread, clay and cooking stoves. Their functions and usage in former Polish Livonia were characterised on the basis of manuscript source materials (kept, among others, in the archives of Riga and Vilnius), including the general inspection of the Livonian diocese of 1761 and the description of the home of the Sisters of Mercy in Krasław of 1818.

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