Liedon Vanhalinna

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

The hillfort of Liedon Vanhalinna has served as an administrative and defensive centre of the region settled in prehistoric times, in the Aurajokilaakso area, since early in prehistory. Vanhalinna is one of the few ancient fortresses in our country that were also used in the Middle Ages.

The Vanhalinna ancient fortress is a steep rocky hill dominating the surrounding open fields, between the Aurajoki river and the Hämeen Härkätie road. The fortress is surrounded by ancient settlement sites, and near it there is also a cremation cemetery. On the other side of the Aurajoki river, the Vanhalinna landscape is linked to the cultivated landscape of Hagan manor.

The farmstead of Vanhalinna manor, on the east side of the fortress hill, dates mainly from the early 20th century. The manor's building stock includes a neoclassical, rendered main building, a mansard-roofed brick cowshed, a farmhands' dwelling alitupa, outbuildings, and, on the opposite side of the Härkätie road, a sawmill and a smithy. The Liedon Vanhalinna Foundation maintains a museum in the manor's main building, the courtyard storehouse houses an ethnographic collection, and the cowshed houses a booking-only restaurant.

At Vanhalinna, the unpaved stretch of the Hämeen Härkätie road that has survived runs as the Vanhalinna road, which the Road Administration has selected as a museum road.

Liedon Vanhalinna is located in the nationally significant landscape area of Aurajokilaakso.

History

The area of present-day Liedon was permanently settled already in prehistoric times, in the Aurajoki and Savijoki valleys. The ancient fortress of Vanhalinna was inhabited already in the Bronze Age, but it was abandoned and taken into use again in the Iron Age, in the period c. 500-800 AD. The fortress hill lay unoccupied until the late 11th century, when its third phase of settlement began. In the Middle Ages the fortress was used until the 14th century. Several buildings stood on the flat top of the hill.

A farm developed under the protection of the fortress hill, probably already in the early Middle Ages. The Vanhalinna solitary farm was first mentioned in surviving historical sources in 1438, when it passed from the Swedish Crown to the ownership of the See of Turku. It remained in the bishop's possession until the 16th century, after which its owners were mainly merchants and officials. Vanhalinna was held by lampuoti and peasants until the 19th century. Vanhalinna was donated to the University of Turku in 1956.

The present main building of Vanhalinna was completed in 1930 according to drawings by building master Onni Touru. Touru also designed a large part of the outbuildings, which were completed in the 1930s, with the exception of the cowshed completed in 1919 and the farmhands' dwelling alitupa, whose oldest parts date from the mid-19th century.