Lake Balaton is only 45 minutes away

Our vacation home is a historic property with unique atmosphere of its own. Originally built as a vicarage. It has a rich past.
Early history
Porva, founded around 900 and one of the first 38 villages that formed Hungary in 996, had always been the center of the imperial hunting grounds of the Hungarian Empire and was passed on as a gift from one ruler to another. To maintain control over the area, a large monastery was built here around the year 1000. Like the current church, the monastery belonged to the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma, which was founded in 996. Around 1550, the monastery was destroyed by the Turkish occupation forces. After the departure of the Turks around 1770, the monastery was a ruin. A new church was built from these ruins. In 1870, the church was modernized in Baroque style and a new vicarage was built. This church is the current church in Porva and the vicarige is the current Green Valley Estate

Vicarage
Because of the importance of the church in Porva, a considerable amount of money was spent on the vicarage. The quality of the materials used is excellent. Very durable and equally expensive red pine was used throughout the house, stables and barns. The exterior walls are between 80 and 100 centimeters thick and are partially constructed from the ruins of the 1,000-year-old monastery. If you take a closer look at the kitchen door, you will see that what appears to be glass in wood is actually glass in a steel frame set into the wooden door, a method that was also used at that time in palaces in Budapest and Vienna. 15 meters wide at the front and 65 meters deep, it has 500 square meters of floor in the house, 60 square meters of basement, and 750 square meters more in the barns, totaling more than 1,300 square meters and about 3,500 cubic meters. Of this, the first floor of the house (250 square meters) is used as a vacation home.
The ceiling, instead of wood covered with plaster, is made of iron I-beams with bricks between them, plastered on the ceiling side. At the top of the ceiling, there is a space of 60 centimeters between the ceiling and the boards that form the floor of the attic. Partly to insulate in the hot summers and cold winters and partly to make room for a double layer of 30-centimeter-thick beams of red pine. The first layer runs from wall to wall across the width of the house, the top layer runs from wall to wall at a 90-degree angle to the bottom layer, providing enough strength to fill the 4-meter-high attic to the top with the harvest from the lands around Porva.

Russian occupation
After World War II, Russian troops took possession of the rectory. The front of the house that used to be the pastor’s quarters was converted into 2 apartments for two Russian officers. The rooms along the corridor where the monks used to live were used as office space.

Dormer


As you can see in one of the photos from 1890, there used to be a dormer on the front roof of the house with a cross on it. After the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, a Russian tank arrived early in the morning, chains were attached to the tank and the dormer was demolished from the house as a punitive measure, as happened with many religious buildings in Hungary.




Restauration


After the Russians left, the house came into the hands of the Porva municipality and was used for more than 10 years as a warehouse for farmers in and around Porva. In 2002, Hungarian Sandor Vigh and his wife bought the house, which at that time was completely ruined by nearly 50 years of Russian neglect and 10 years of service as a warehouse. Sandor Vigh began restoring the house. We were able to buy the house from him in 2007, and in 2010 we completed the restoration in frequent consultations with Sandor about historical details. Currently, the house is in excellent condition, although a house of this size is never really finished.