Tuorlan maatalousoppilaitos

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

The Tuorla rural vocational school is an institution promoting agriculture and horticulture, tracing its origins to the 1880s, which was established on the lands of the manor built in the 1810s in its central parts. The history of this architecturally and scenically valuable estate goes back to the Middle Ages.

Tuorla manor is located on the north shore of Piikkiönlahti, along the Suuri Rantatie. The main building of the manor is placed on the highest point of the terrain, and its oldest two-storey section is flanked by single-storey wings built in the 1810s. The main building was remodelled under architect Erik Bryggman in 1929. The landscape is dominated by the farm buildings, built at the beginning of the 19th century in a unified architectural style, which form a wall-like barrier along the southern side of the old road alignment, the medieval-origin Suuri Rantatie. The park also contains a grain storehouse completed in the first half of the 19th century.

On the hill behind the Tuorla farmyard is an astronomical research institute, the oldest structures of which are linked to research methods developed by Academician Väisälä. Tuorla operates as a rural vocational school, and to the south of the old group of buildings a new school building, dormitories and service buildings were constructed in the 1980s. The Kuninkaanniitty meadow at Tuorla is a south-facing slope with magnificent oaks and hazel scrub.

History

Piikkiö Hulkkis-Tuorla was in the Middle Ages an estate belonging to the bishop's see, which passed to the Crown in the church reduction. The estate, which had been granted in fief, was returned to the Crown in the Great Reduction of 1683, after which Tuorla became a Crown ratsutila. It was acquired as hereditary property in 1774, and in the 1770s the Neitsentalo noble manor (rälssisäteri) from the village of Hulkkio in Kaarina was added to it, and in the 1880s and 1890s a further four holdings from the same village. The central building stock of Tuorla manor was built in the 1810s during the time of the governor's wife, Wendla von Willebrand.

In 1885 a two-year agricultural school founded by forester Alfred von Haartman began operating on the estate. Agricultural schools of this kind had already been established in Finland in the 1840s and 1850s to provide basic instruction and practical training. At the same time the estate also housed a girls' horticultural school and Finland's first karjakko courses. The school ceased operations in 1908. From 1924, Tuorla was owned by municipal councillor Akseli Haikio, who had been among the founders of Turun suomalainen yliopisto. In 1944 Haikio donated the manor to the Turun yliopisto, which then founded a new agricultural school. The estate passed to the state in 1974, when a third agricultural school began at Tuorla. Horticultural school operations began in 1977. In 1993 the Tuorla agricultural and horticultural institute and the Paimio forestry school were merged into the Varsinais-Suomen maaseutuoppilaitos, which operates under the ownership of a kuntainliitto.