Suuremõisa manor

Suuremõisa is the only Estonian place name on Vormsi and it was also the seat of the manor, which encompassed all of Vormsi in the second half of the 18th century. In Swedish and German the manor was known as Magnushof.

The first manors were established on Vormsi in the 17th century. Before this, the island’s peasants belonged to Haapsalu Castle. At the beginning of the 17th century, the island had Söderby and Bussby manors, the latter of which, founded in 1604 and originally belonging to ensign Magnus Brümmer, is the predecessor of Suuremõsa, as the first manor was located in Bussby. Records from 1625 and 1645 refer to the manor by the name of its founder, Magnushof, and sometimes by the name of the village as Hof Busby.

In 1636, Magnushof was acquired by Jakob De la Gardie, the owner of Suuremõisa in Hiiumaa. He had the largest village on Vormsi, Bussby, emptied and built what was then considered a modern manor house just north of the centre of the village. The legend of the Bussby wedding tells the tale of how the village was emptied.

At the end of the 17th century, the manor passed to the Königsmarck family. In 1747, Suuremõisa was bought by Karl Wilhelm von Stackelberg, the lord of the Tumala and Roobaka manors in Saaremaa. Soon after that, he also acquired Söderby manor. The Stackelbergs owned Suuremõisa for more than 150 years. While the first landlords of Suuremõisa did not live on the island and rarely visited Vormsi, the Stackelbergs made it their home. The Stackelbergs also had a new main building built instead of the earlier wooden structure. Only the foundations of the main building can be seen today.

The main building of the manor was completed in 1814. It was a two-storey stone building in classical architectural style. In the 1860s, the main building was rebuilt in the historicist style, and it was given arched windows on the second floor, some of which were designed with triple windows on the façade. The side avant-corps of the façade were adorned with pediments. The building was crowned by a three-storey polygonal projecting tower structure with a domed roof in the centre of the façade.

The manor also had numerous outbuildings, also built of stone. Today, all that remains are the ruins of a barn and carriage house with four round columns, an icehouse on the other side of the road and a Dutch-style windmill further away from the heart of the manor.

The Stackelberg era on Vormsi was marked by constant quarrels and violence against peasants. The first conflicts flared up in the second half of the 18th century when the Stackelbergs arrived on the island. The main source of strife was the old charters of freedom issued by the Swedish kings to the peasants of Vormsi, according to which the peasants were personally free, not serfs like Estonians. As a result, the Vormsi peasants were unwilling to do more work days or take on more duties than agreed. The peasants protested to various authorities, even to the King of Sweden. The baron used corporal punishment against peasants who resisted. Conflict with the peasants became especially heated in the first half of the 19th century under the rule of Friedrich Arent von Stackelberg, who was said to be particularly cruel. The quarrel ended with the manor being taken from him in the early 1840s and placed under the rule of the authorities.

Already in 1844 the rule of the manor was given to the baron’s son, Otto Frederik Stackelberg. His widow sold the manor to the Russian state in 1894, after he has passed away. The manor’s main building was put into use as a sanatorium for girls. The Russian army stationed on the island during the 1917 revolution razed the manor complex, triggering its decline. The main manor house was demolished in the 1930s.