Fara Chudenice

My father, Ondrej Soucek discovered Chudenice in the early 2000’s whilst travelling around Southern Bohemia with his architect friend Macek. The building, formerly a rectory was purchased from the Bishopric of Pilsen in auction and is listed as a cultural heritage building. It uniquely combined my father’s wish as a Czechoslovak to restore a building in his former homeland and his love of history and historical artefacts. The Fara, built in 1737, is an attractive neo-classical building set in a charming historical village. In the 1950’s it ceased to be used as a rectory and was turned over to the collectivized farming cooperative. By the mid 1990’s when the building was restituted to the church, it was in very poor condition. In fact much worse than anyone realized. The first works undertaken were to repair the roof of the adjacent barn. The idea behind this was a) that the roofers hone their skills and b) that any original beams replaced could be used to repair sections of rotten beams on the rectory roof, allowing for a more subtle approach on this beautiful roof. The rectory roof is a complicated and heavy structure, typically clad in light wooden tiles often painted. In our case, cement tiles had been laid on top of rotting wooden tiles and the roof had to be completely stripped back only to reveal that the tie beam had turned to dust and many of the purloins were rotten where they joined the tie beam. And so, the immense weight of the roof was now pushing the walls out. Next the building needed to be tied with steel rods to secure the walls. In the process of taking apart the floors in the first floor we discovered original floor boards underneath never layers of flooring. These were then brought back to life. Wherever possible original features were saved and restored as far as possible. When we replaced the windows we retained the original French style locking mechanism and swapped in the original glass. The original layout was retained as far as possible. The Mortuary is now a bedroom with the narrow access corridor turned into a modern bathroom. On the ground floor original six sided ceramic tiles and wide planks were discovered under lino flooring and were restored. In ground floor rooms where concrete had caused damp problems, this was removed, an a natural underfloor air flow system installed and second hand old parquet flooring was laid down. In all the original spirit of the building has been brought back to life. In places even the 18th century door locks made to work. The rectory is now open for guests to hire. It will hopefully bring a taste of baroque beauty into the lives of the tourists that visit this region.