Wooden Holy Cross Church in Buk

On a small mound in Buk, where a fortified settlement may have stood before the town was founded, the larch-wood Holy Cross Church has stood since 1760 – a rare example of a timber church on a Greek-cross plan, with four equal arms and a false dome crowned by an octagonal turret. It was funded by Wiktor Raczyński of Wojnowice, son of the governor of Poznań. The interior keeps most of its Rococo furnishings, and around the church lies a cemetery where insurgents of 1848 and of the Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919) are buried.

History: the third church on the hill

The present church is the third to stand here, on what was once a suburb of Buk called Konary. The first chapel mentioned in a document of Duke Bolesław the Pious from 1257 may well have stood on this spot. After Buk received town rights under Magdeburg law in 1289, the town moved a few hundred metres to the site of today's market square, and the mound passed entirely to the Church. A Church of St Adalbert stood here, recorded during a fire in 1515 and enlarged in 1608–1609, but it was dismantled in the 18th century. In its place Raczyński built the present church in mature Baroque style.

In 2020 the church was restored as part of an EU co-funded project to renovate ten wooden churches of the Archdiocese of Poznań.

Architecture

The church has a boarded timber frame of larch wood. A sacristy was added to the west of the Greek cross and a porch to the east. Above the crossing rises a false dome with an octagonal turret and a cupola topped by a metal-clad lantern. Inside, eight columns arranged in a circle support the ceiling.

What to see inside

• the high altar with a late Gothic crucifix, probably from the earlier church – at the foot of the cross a carved "Golgotha" with a lion, a dragon, a dove and snakes,
• the tabernacle with a revolving throne,
• four side altars: the Sistine Madonna, the Transfiguration, St Michael the Archangel and a holy bishop,
• ceiling paintings – four scenes from the life of St Adalbert (his arrival among the Prussians, martyrdom, the ransoming of his body and his glory), recalling the earlier dedication,
• the Rococo pulpit, the choir loft painted with a choir of angels and a 16th-century sandstone holy-water stoup in the porch,
• in the turret – a carved dove with putti and images of Saints Casimir, Adalbert, Hedwig of Silesia and Stanislaus.

Interesting facts

Look for a heart made of slate on one wall of the turret. In the porch, left of the door, hangs the epitaph of Stanisław Baranowicz from 1795 – probably as an act of penance he was buried outside, beneath the church threshold. Next to the church stand a wooden bell tower from 1757, still roofed with its original shingles, and a stone Ecce Homo statue from 1762. The cemetery holds, among others, Stanisław Kaczmarek, a soldier of Napoleon's army; Regina Wańkowicz, sister of the writer Melchior Wańkowicz; and Dr Lech Siuda, a friend of Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska, who visited Buk several times thanks to him. At its centre is the mass grave of the 1848 scythe-bearers and the Greater Poland insurgents, with a miniature copy of the Insurgent statue – the 1928 original was dismantled by the Germans in 1939.

Tripto tip

This is an active church, so the interior can be visited outside services – check Mass times and access on the parish website or ask locally. The exterior, bell tower and Ecce Homo statue can be seen at any time; in the cemetery, keep to the paths. Allow 30–45 minutes for the church and cemetery.