Gorki village. The Medunetsky Estate.

In the shade of tall trees, along the dusty road leading to the Disna River, hides one of those sights of Belarus that cannot be found by bright signs. Here, in the village of Gorki in the Miory district, time seemed to have stopped. Among the lush greenery are the skeletons of brick buildings - all that remains of the once sturdy manor of the noble family of Medunetsky.

Silence on the high shore.

The road to the manor is short, but it allows you to feel the change of scenery: from the usual village buildings to an overgrown park, where the noble outlines of the old walls are discernible behind the branches. The complex is located about a kilometer from Disna, and if you have the coordinates (55.551887, 28.198945), you can easily find this place.

Today, the manor yard is spacious and empty. The air here is filled with the smell of decayed foliage and silence, which is broken only by the singing of birds. But if you look closely, the ruins start talking.

The mistress of the estate and the brick business.

In the 19th century, these lands belonged to Veronika Mikhanovich, a woman who inherited Gorki from her father. When she married Stanislav Ignatius Medunetsky, she brought him not only this estate as a dowry, but also neighboring Verki village. The family was quite wealthy: according to 1870 data, the property included the surrounding villages of Bychinishchina, Kasabuki, Retsky, Ulshchyna and Sharagi.

The fate of the estate has developed in a unique way due to the practicality of the owners. The Medunetskys owned their own brick factory. That is why most of the buildings were built not from wood, which most often would not have survived the hard times, but from good-quality brick. Our own production has become the key to durability: the walls, built more than a hundred years ago, still stubbornly hold on, resisting time and bad weather.

A factory that survived the war.

The history of the Medunetsky brick factory deserves special attention. During the Great Patriotic War, the enterprise was destroyed. However, the need for building materials to rebuild the destroyed Disna and the area was so great that the Gorki plant was started up again after the war.

Eyewitnesses recall that production was put on stream: the press for forming raw bricks worked in two shifts, providing the region with the necessary material. Thus, the Medunetsky legacy served people for a long time, simply by changing the owner.

A walk among the ruins.

What does a traveler see today? Unfortunately, the main house of the estate has not been preserved. However, brick outbuildings and outbuildings have reached us. The red brick, sometimes covered with moss, sometimes collapsed, creates a picturesque, slightly sad landscape.

The powerful walls with empty eye sockets of the window openings, the remains of the foundations of the destroyed buildings - all this allows you to imagine the scale of the former estate. The territory is partially overgrown, but the layout of the courtyard is still legible: you can guess where the main entrance was and where the utility yards were located.

Heritage.

The Medunetsky estate in Gorki is not just ruins. This is a monument to the era when noble nests were built conscientiously, and bricks were fired in their own furnaces. Lovers of abandoned places and quiet reflections should come here. Looking at these walls, you can't help but think about how war and time change hands, but they can't completely erase the traces of human labor.

You can get here by the Miory highway or via Disna. This is a great point for a short trip into the past, where, amidst the silence of the Vitebsk countryside, you should hear the echo of the factory press that once worked here in two shifts.