A historic 16th-century fortified manor house in Będkowice near Wrocław, with a surviving Renaissance portal and part of a former manor complex.
Będkowice Manor House (Dwór w Będkowicach) is a historic fortified manor house from the 16th century, part of a larger manor complex near Wrocław.
Beneath the present building, archaeologists have documented the remains of an early medieval conical motte with a moat and a later, medieval castle. On their site, the then owner of the estate, Nickel Galhor, built a new structure in the mid-16th century: a fortified manor house with a cellar and one storey, 28 metres long and 14 metres wide, surrounded by a moat. The interiors and windows were rebuilt in turn around 1620, 1735, 1785 and 1845.
After Nickel Galhor's death, the manor house changed hands several times, until, at the turn of the 1660s and 1670s, it was bought by David Heinrich von Zedlitz und Leipe. The Zedlitz family held the estate until the death of the last representative of the family in 1846. Until 1945 the manor house belonged to the von Mutius family, who however lived on their other estates, with only a steward residing on site. After 1945 the building was converted into flats for employees of the local state farm (PGR), and by 2002 the site was already in private hands, with the owner beginning renovation.
On the outside of the building, an early Renaissance portal survives with the heraldic cartouche of the von Gellhorn family and a German inscription from 1546, and above the entrance is set a marble plaque with the Zedlitz coat of arms and a list of the manor house's successive owners from 1546 to 1812. Inside, stoves survive, including the oldest from the 18th century, a Baroque fireplace and fragments of Renaissance polychromy.
The manor house is part of a manor complex, which also includes a farmstead with a granary, two barns and a cowshed from 1857, as well as a park and a bridge.
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