Grabbackan kartanolinnan raunio ja Gösbackavikenin viljelymaisema (Grabbacka adelsborgs ruin och Gösbackavikens odlingslandskap)

English translation (from the Finnish)

The text above is the record as published by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto), in Finnish. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto); it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

The ruin of Grabbacka manor castle, the road alignment, the villages and the Gösbackaviken cultivated landscape together form a representative and diverse cultural landscape inherited from the Middle Ages. Numerous Iron Age ancient monuments bear witness to the long history of settlement and the area's central location.

In the cultivated landscape bounded by hills, east of Läppträsket, there are significant settlement-historical elements from prehistory up to the Middle Ages. From the former islands and skerries of the area, which in prehistoric times was a sea bay, numerous Iron Age ancient fortifications, settlement areas and burial areas remain. The most significant structure of the historical period is the ruin of Grabbacka's medieval manor castle, past which runs the so-called connecting-road alignment of the medieval Suuri Rantatie.

The ruin of Grabbacka's medieval manor castle stands by the road leading to Snappertuna, on the eastern edge of the Gösbackaviken cultivated valley, on top of a rock escarpment. Remains of the vaulted cellar storey of the manor castle survive. The present appearance of the main building of the Grabbacka farm next to the ruin, completed in the 1860s, dates from the 1930s. The brick-built Grabbacka school by the road was completed in 1916.

The two-storey main building and luhti of the Snobbers farm in Västanby village date from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Older building stock survives on the Barkars and Klockars farms. A winding village road opens onto beautiful views of the slope meadows.

On the visually prominent Finnbacka village hill, older building stock survives on the Mankers, Knuts and Lamboas farms. On the Mankers farm there is a main building and outbuildings built in the early 19th century.

The ruin of Grabbacka manor castle and the Gösbackaviken cultivated landscape form part of the wider nationally significant landscape area called Snappertuna-Fagervik.

History

In prehistoric times the present cultivated plain of Gösbackaviken was still a sea bay. Its location at the junction of sea bays, rivers and the first Salpausselkä gave the area good land and water transport links. In the Iron Age the area was already densely settled. The area's Iron Age finds, settlement sites, hillforts and graves are concentrated on the islands of the sea bay and on the hilly areas rising on its shores. In the Middle Ages the Suuri Rantatie route passed through Karjaa, and the parish had the castles of Junkarsbord and Raasepori as well as Grabbacka manor castle built in it.

Grabbacka, built along the Suuri Rantatie connecting road, is one of four manors in Western Uusimaa built of stone at the end of the 15th century. The manor castle was probably built after an order issued in 1483, when Queen Margareta's ban on building castles and towers of stone was repealed. The builder is considered to be Måns Andersson Grabbe, judge of the eastern Raasepori hundred. The last building phase of the säteri manor, linked to Erik Arvidsson Stålarm, has been dated to the mid-16th century. The building went out of use after a fire in 1672.

In the 1560s Västanby village had four farms. Finnbacka had three farms in the 17th century, and it was apparently settled in the late 16th century.