Ugod Summary
Ugod
Summary
Summary
Ugod, lying in the hilly, wooded area called Bakonyalja, in the North-Western part of Veszprém county, is an ancient settlement. Along its border, in the forests of the Bakony, a so called tumulus culture with a big quantity of earthwork and tumulus of an unknown people can be seen even today from the XIII–XI centuries BC of the late Bronze Age.
After the millenia of the prehistoric age, the Roman Empire also left its traces here: near the settlement called Dióspuszta today, a Roman manorial farm lived its everyday life here for nearly four centuries. The sepulchral monument of the Petronius family was found in this area, today it is preserved in Pápa.
In the Hungarian Middle Ages, Ugod comes of the Csák family ruling the royal forest of the Bakony, received an estate here consisting of a dozen villages, and a royal permission to build a castle made of stone at this important point of the Bakony area to mark the centre of the estate and to protect it. The castle was built in the 1280-ies primarily as a fortress to provide accommodation for the owners of the estate.
With all probability, Mór comes from the Csák family was born here. He together with his wife joined the monks of the Dominican order. Mór received the blessing of the Catholic church.
The line of the Csák dynasty coming from Ugod comes soon died out, and the castle with its estates was granted to the brave Csening, by the Hungarian kings of the Anjou dynasty for his faithful diplomatic service. Later, Ugod was acquired by the powerful Garai, then by Török from Enying, then by Szapolyai, and finally by the Esterházy family.
During the XIV–XV centuries, a settlement was formed around the castle, which according to the royal war-tax census in 1488, consisted of twenty-five serf farms. Olaszfalu, which was lying nearby had twenty-one serf farms. On the basis of the number of tax-paying farms, the population of the villages, which populated the area of the present settlement, amounted to at least 350 people, which could be considered as a large population in those centuries of the Middle Ages. In the first decades of the XVI century, the settlement also received the rank of a borough, which meant that it could organise fairs.
The evenly developing settlement was literally swept away by the ever increasing attacks of the Turkish army after 1541–1543. Probably, the settlement lying around the castle, and also the medieval church, which stood in the place of the present school were destroyed in 1545. The castle standing on the border of two estates with the soldiers, who were not very different from bandits in it, was present for many decades, dominating the whole area.
The Nádasdy family – the then lords of the destroyed village – re-established the borough of Ugod and the castle in 1608. Soon they were acquired by the Esterházy family, and made them the centre of their estate. Ugod was a significant estate, and centre with the bailiffís seat of the Esterházy counts from the middle of the XVII century until the middle of the XX century.
In the middle of the XVIII century, the settlement of today was gradually built, and the parish-church of the village was constructed over the ruins of the destroyed castle.
Until 1848, the population were as serfs of the Esterházy family. They supplemented their living from lime-burning and extensive animal husbandry with animals kept on acorn in the woods.
The feudal large estate started to diminish after the bourgeois revolution in March 1848, and had to tolerate smallholders’ farms along the border. For a while, between 1907 and 1944, large industrial lime-burning was carried out along small-scale lime-burning in the settlement. This, however was eliminated by the second World War, but neither could farming on a large scale in a co-operative system take root.
After 1990, since the political-economic changes of the new system, we have been witnessing the revival of small farms, and larger agricultural businesses in Ugod.
The favourable natural resources, the diligence of the people living here, the evolving tourism, village tourism, and the boom of the industries of the neighbouring towns all have the inherent possibility of development on the long term. The area of Ugod may become a dynamically developing small region of the former district of Pápa.
