The Baroque Hámoš Manor House, Demjata
The oldest written record on Demjata dates back to 1332 stating that the parish priest Matej worked in the local church. In documents from the 14th to the 16th centuries, Demjata appears under the name Demethe. It is a Hungarian name derived from the original Slovak personal name. In the middle of the 15th century, the village was divided into Nižná (Lower) and Vyšná (Upper) Demjata. The western part of the village is dominated by the manor house “Hámoš” and its adjacent park.
The manor house was built in the second half of the 16th century as a Renaissance building called the “Hámoš” or Amos manor house – according to the surname of the owners. Originally a Renaissance building was later rebuilt in the Baroque style in 1764. It is a two-storey four-wing building with a rectangular floor plan which creates an inner atrium courtyard. The façade originally had stone profiled window linings (several of them were preserved on the western façade). On the main (eastern) façade there is a centrally situated staircase with a Baroque portal, with columns on the sides and a rich Dutch gable. Above the portal is a Baroque window with a broken pediment. On the front façade and the original Renaissance consoles there are new historicist bay windows. The façade is finished with a horizontal row of embrasure and a crown cornice.
The manor house originally had a gabled attic made of semi-circular gables, which have been preserved on the north side of the courtyard façade. The courtyard originally had an open arcade, which was later bricked up. On the southwest corner of the manor house there is a square three-storey tower. In the interior of the building there are Renaissance vaults on the ground floor and Prussian vaults on the second floor. At the end of the 19th century, a landscape garden was made, probably on the place of the former green area.
Only the torso original landscape garden has been preserved. The entire western part of the garden was sold off as a building plot and in recent years family houses have reached the border of the manor house, significantly disturbing its compositional balance. A grass field was set up in the southern ornamental part of the garden. The original woody plants growing in the area include large-leaved linden, red-leaved beech, horse-chestnut, slender ash and tassel-shaped birch. Although the original disposition of the landscape garden was reduced, there is still a land where the original landscape garden could be restored – an evidence of the period development of the garden art in this region.
