The socio-topography of Toruń’s suburbs in the 14th–18th century – the Żabieniec case

Abstract

The state of research on the transformations of urban space and the socio-topography of Polish towns in the Middle Ages and the Post-Medieval Period is still relatively poor.

This also applies to the subject of the presented research – the suburbs of Toruń. Apart from the cartographic presentation in an atlas of Polish towns, outdated research results of the 19th-century German historians and the partly outdated findings of Tomasz Jasiński, Toruń’s suburbs were not the subject of monographic studies. And yet, the source database is quite extensive; there are both cartographic presentations – already known to researchers as the so-called Douglas’ plan from 1793, but also plans unused to-date of the Rybaki quarter, the plan of Geretowo, and finally plans and sketches of individual plots from the suburb areas. In addition, numerous lists of rents collected from suburban plots survived. They allow for the reconstruction of ownership and economic relations in this area at least in the 18th century. Toruń’s suburbs changed their appearance from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century. The system of medieval streets and plots were destroyed during the construction of the Post-Medieval town’s fortifications in the first half of the 17th century. Serious damage to the suburbs and the displacement of settlements from the areas situated farthest to the north was the result of the Polish-Swedish wars, especially the Great Northern War 1703–1710 and the accompanying epidemics in 1708 and 1710. The intensity of settlement of individual suburbs also changed. In medieval Toruń, the largest settlement centres were located in the St Lawrence’s and St George’s quarters, located to the north of the town walls, while in the 18th century they were situated in parts along the Vistula River – in Rybaki and Winnica. It is also worth noting that Toruń’s suburbs were inhabited mainly by Poles, which clearly distinguished their ethnic structure from the town within the walls. The share of the inhabitants of Polish descent in the suburbs increased steadily from the Middle Ages to the late 18th century. One of the most regularly built suburbs was Żabieniec – a part of Rybaki and it was inhabited from the Middle Ages to the late 18th century. It covered 22 plots in the Middle Ages and 24 plots in the late 18th century, to which Prussian authorities assigned the cadastral numbers 48–71 in 1793. In this article, the history of plots located in Żabieniec in the 18th century was reconstructed with an indication of the amount of rent paid to the town treasury, changes in the building, damage caused by the Vistula River floods and other events (e.g. gunpowder explosion). This reconstruction presents the professional and ethnic structure of the tenants of the plots in Żabieniec. It shows the possibilities for research on Toruń’s suburbs in the future.