Woronowica was the nest of the Woronowicki family of unknown coat of arms.
The daughter of Ivan, Olena Woronowicka, presumably the last of the family through the female line, married Michał Łaska of the Leliwa coat of arms, son of Olechny, heir of Łaski and Dziunków, district judge of Bracław and Winnica (died probably after 1606), bringing him Woronowica, as well as Saborów, Stefanówka, and Soroczyn as a dowry.
After Michał senior, part of Woronowica and Łaski with adjacent properties were inherited by one of his three sons, Michał Łasko, junior, district judge of Winnica in 1591, and later treasurer of Winnica, married to Princess Owdotia Domontówna (Domontowiczówna) of the Ostoja coat of arms. He had an only son, Teodor, military officer of Bracław (1640) and district judge of Winnica (1642), who married twice: first to Marusza Bohdana Obodeńska, heiress of Pietniczan and Pokalewa, and secondly to Katarzyna Hańska, secondly married to Grocholska, thirdly married to Radomyska. Teodor Łaska left many children. One of the daughters, Teofila, married Marcin Radzimiński of the Lubicz coat of arms, bringing him the largest part of the estate as a dowry, both from her parents and grandparents, including half of Woronowica. The other half of this estate and Stefanówka were in possession of the third son of district judge Michał Łaska, Bohdan, treasurer of Bracław, married to Katarzyna Stawecka. Since he died childless, both estates, with certain legacies for the widow, passed to Teofila from the Łaski family Radzimińska. Anna Radzimińska, cupbearer of Czernihów, marrying Michał from Grocholic and Grabów Grocholski of the Syrokomla coat of arms, district judge of the Bracław voivodeship (1744), colonel of the royal army, and commander of the Ukrainian party, brought him the Woronowica and Pietniczański key as a dowry. In this way, the not very wealthy judge became the creator of the future wealth of his family, further increased by his descendants.
In the second half of the 18th century, Woronowica and Tereszki passed to the youngest son of Michał – Franciszek Ksawery Grocholski (died in 1792), crown sword-bearer, married to Helena Lesznicka (Leśnicka), heiress of the Czerwoń and Norzyński keys, and after him to his son, Jan Nepomucen (died in 1849), president of the Main Courts of Podolia. He had two wives: first Izabella Reyterowska of the Topór coat of arms (?), and then Michalina Zeydler. After the death of Jan Nepomucen, the keys Woronowica and Czerwona were inherited by his eldest son Adolf Norbert Erazm (1797 – 1863). As a participant in the November Uprising of 1831, he was exiled to Kursk, but after a few years, he could return to the country and save the heritage from confiscation. Enjoying universal respect, he repeatedly held the office of marshal of the Starokonstantynów and Berdyczów counties, actively supported emigration, and had close contacts with the Hotel Lambert. In Czerwona, he ran a famous breeding of Arabian horses. Neither with his first wife, Otylia from the Poniatowski family, nor with his second, Wanda from the Radziwiłł family from the Berdyczów line, did he leave offspring.
After the death of Adolf Grocholski, the Woronowica key passed to his younger brother Ludgard (born in 1840), married to Maria Rohozińska of the Abdank coat of arms, widow of Władysław Grocholski.
He, in turn, was actively involved in the 1863 Uprising, belonging to the so-called “Niemirowska organization” and serving as treasurer of the Bracław district. The Woronowica key was not confiscated from him, but according to the Tsarist decree of December 10, 1865, it had to be sold. From exile to Siberia and property confiscation, Grocholski was saved by a local peasant, Ivan Mistota, a former court Cossack, who managed to warn the heir that the house and park were surrounded by Russian troops. The owner of Woronowica thus had time to burn the papers “compromising” him. His guilt could not be proven. According to the laws in force from December 1865 to 1905 in the areas of the former eastern Polish provinces, the buyer of a landed estate could only be a Russian. Woronowica was therefore bought by Nikolai Mozhaisky, married to Miss Czichaczow, daughter of the famous admiral from Kuryłowiec Murowanych – Nikolai.
Before World War I, when the regulations limiting the rights of Poles were somewhat relaxed, the Grocholski family planned to buy back these goods from Russian hands. The outbreak of the revolution in 1917 thwarted these plans.
In the years around 1780 – 1790, Franciszek Ksawery Grocholski built a classicist palace in Woronowica with a strictly symmetrical layout, resembling a short, open horseshoe, somewhat reminiscent of the Myslewicki Palace in the Warsaw Łazienki. Its creator was supposed to be an architect named Lorentz or Lorenc, working for the Grocholski family. The location of the palace was quite unusual, as the cour d’honneur in front of it was significantly above the level of the road leading from Niemirów to Winnica, parallel to the facade of the house and not far from it. The slightly sloping slope on which the palace stood was leveled to its level by an artificial embankment. The outer side of the embankment was walled, and since its right side turned out to be quite high, a stable for “dispersed Cossacks” was placed there, allegedly for 100 horses. On the opposite side of the parade courtyard, on the axis of the palace, the main entrance gate was set, consisting of two tall quadrilateral pillars and two side, much lower ones, on which gates were hung.
The main, seven-axis body of the palace with a rectangular plan was three-story. The ground floor and its second floor were residential, while the first was designed as a bel etage. The front facade of the building was accented by a three-axis, apparent risalit, emphasized at the corners with rustication.
Next to it rose a portico, serving simultaneously as a covered driveway.
In the lower tier, the plinth of the portico formed a massive wall, pierced by three semicircular arches and enlivened by niches of the same shape. On the arcade wall stood four pairs of columns with stylized Corinthian capitals in a grand order, encompassing the middle and highest floors of the palace. They supported an entablature decorated with a frieze with motifs of plant grotesque. The portico was crowned with a delicate dentil cornice and a very prominent corbel, while from the front, a low, semicircular in the middle, convex attic. Its tympanum was also filled with stuccowork. The risalit section of the facade on the ground floor housed the entrance door and two windows on the sides in relatively modest frames. The first floor received a much richer plastic decoration.
A wide, balustraded balcony over the driveway was accessed by a central, tripartite porte-fenetre set in column frames. Above it was a large semicircular window, and on the sides were bipartite porte-fenetres, each composed of ten panes. The second-floor windows were square with four panes. The side porte-fenetres featured particularly rich frames, topped with garlands and triangular pediments. A similar decoration as the risalit section was also given to the two-axis side sections of the facade. By widely using porte-fenetres, the architect also placed them in the entirely rusticated parterre of the palace.
On both sides of the main body, obliquely to its facade, two two-story and two-axis pavilions with a square plan were erected. They also had rusticated facades on the ground floor. On the first floor, rustication covered only the corners.
Here too, instead of windows, only porte-fenetres in profiled frames were used. Short, slightly curved wings connected both pavilions with the main body. They were also equipped with porte-fenetres on both floors. The central ones on the first floor were shaped similarly to those in the portico section. The pavilions and both wings were crowned with a wide garland frieze, interrupted by ram’s heads. The garden facade was treated as secondary. However, as on the driveway side, the piano nobile, equipped exclusively with porte-fenetres, was separated from the ground floor and the second floor by a smooth lower band and a slightly wider and slightly profiled upper band. Vertical rustication strips also marked three central axes of the representative floor, thus creating a slightly enriching apparent risalit in the garden facade as well. The side porte-fenetres of the bel-etage were only framed with smooth borders, while the three central openings were topped with triangular decorative pediments, supported on consoles. At these three axes, there might originally have been a small terrace, now nonexistent, with fan-shaped stairs leading directly to the garden (as in Łabunie in the former Bełz voivodeship). The central body of the palace with side pavilions in the bend of the middle floor was also enriched with a tripartite porte-fenetre, set in frames of two columns. The columns, cornices, corbels crowning all facades, rustication, window and door frames, and stuccowork were white, contrasting vividly with the intense yellow of the background. The main body was covered with a four-pitched roof with curved slopes, with two elongated, plastered collective chimneys, the pavilion with a domed roof, and the wings with a smooth, gabled roof. As the drawing by Orda shows, the left, southern pavilion was directly connected with a one-story, but significantly elevated, four-axis orangery, serving as a winter garden. Its facades were divided by doubled rustication strips, placed at the corners and between the windows. This building was covered with a smooth, four-pitched roof.
The main body of the palace had a two-bay, enfilade layout inside. On the ground floor, all rooms were vaulted, while on the first floor, they were mostly covered with ceilings. Since in the second half of the 19th century Woronowica was in Russian possession, there is a lack of detailed information about the palace interiors. After the revolution, the entire central body and the right wing were rebuilt, losing their original decoration.
We know only that on the first floor, in both bays, there used to be salons, mostly called “mosaic” from the stucco walls.
Among the most beautiful was the dining room with a coffered ceiling and the ballroom. All the representative rooms were equipped with floors composed in patterns of multicolored parquet and marble fireplaces. The ceilings were covered with rich stuccowork. Some salons had silk or damask wall coverings.
Under the coves of the ceilings ran friezes, each with a different theme.
The artistic value of the plastic decoration of the representative rooms of the palace can be testified by two rooms preserved to this day in a slightly altered state. Both are located in the left, southern wing. The first of them, oval, directly connected with the former corner salon of the garden bay, is covered with a mirror vault, with a large, also oval plafond, divided by a relief grid into small squares. They were filled with rosettes in the form of various species of flowers.
From two large rosettes on the sides, composed of oak leaves and surrounded by a wreath of acanthus leaves, presumably hung crystal chandeliers. The plafond is surrounded by a wide frieze, in which as repeating motifs, winged goddess of victory Nike’s acanthus volutes were used, with a lioness and lion, an allegory of strength, woven into them. Between the volute scrolls with animal elements, interruptions of vine leaves were placed. These themes repeat on both sides of the longer sides of the plafond. Both narrower ends of the frieze above the door openings are divided into three triangular panels framed with profiles. Between them, on low pedestals, stand: the goddess of spring Flora, adorned with a flower wreath, and the goddess of eternal youth Hebe, serving as a cupbearer on Olympus.
The second salon with partially preserved decoration is located in the left pavilion. It received daylight from three sides. Although square, sixteen columns arranged in a circle of polished white stucco gave the impression as if it had a circular plan. The columns support the entablature of the dome and the cove, covered with wide, slightly profiled cornices and corbels. The vault is divided into sixteen fields, corresponding to the number of columns, narrowing towards the center. Their frames are decorated with small rosettes, and the fields they enclose are covered with stuccowork with plant motifs, into which figures from the ancient world are woven. The center is occupied by a large acanthus leaf rosette, surrounded by a circular flower wreath. Once, a chandelier also hung from here.
According to family accounts, before 1863, the Woronowica palace also had magnificent stylish furnishings, mainly from the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as many works of art. Woronowica owed much to J.N. Grocholski, who transferred many valuable furniture and family collections there from Tereszki in Volhynia, inherited after his brother Antoni, who died in 1805.
Antoni, the marshal of Starokonstantynów, was a great lover of fine arts, so from every journey, he brought either valuable sculptures or paintings to Tereszki.
During his stay in Livorno and Rome in 1797, he acquired 519 canvases by masters of the French, Dutch, Flemish, and Italian schools, with a presumed original by Titian, which he placed at his residence in Tereszki, from where they were transferred to Woronowica.
After the death of Jan Nepomucen Grocholski, both the goods and collections were to be divided among his three sons: Adolf, Ludgard, and Władysław. Since the two younger brothers were still several years away from reaching adulthood, the division was postponed until that time. For now, a significant part of this collection was walled up in one of the rooms of the Woronowica palace. As a result of not ventilating it for fifteen years, when the formal division finally took place, it turned out that many paintings had been destroyed by moisture and mold. They could not be saved.
What survived was divided mechanically, as a result of which Woronowica lost significantly. In the round column room, for example, among ten pillars stood a group of marble statues, originally composed of nine muses and Apollo. After the division, only three muses were left in place, while Apollo and the remaining muses were taken partly to Czerwona and partly to Tereszki. The remaining artworks stayed there until the forced sale of the estate. Before leaving Woronowica, Ludgard Grocholski managed to transport part of the movable property again to Tereszki, including all antique items and even some Louis XVI style marble fireplaces, as well as many other marble works of artistic value in the form of sculptures, further paintings, including works considered originals by Correggio, Rembrandt, and Rubens, family portraits, bronzes, tapestries, silver, porcelain, and a valuable family archive.
It included, among others, papers of the Grocholski family of the Syrokomla coat of arms, which moved to the eastern borders of the Republic from Sandomierz in the 16th century. These records mostly dated to the end of the 16th century and only in rare cases concerned its beginnings.
To a large extent, the archive also included family and estate papers of other families related to the Grocholski family, mainly Woronowicki, Obodeński, Łaski, Sabarowski, and Luba-Radzimiński. They came into the possession of the Grocholski family with the hand of Anna Radzimińska, wife of Michał Andrzej Grocholski. Despite the fact that the Grocholski family after Michał split into the Pietniczańsko-Strzyżawiecka, Sudyłkowska, Hrycowsko-Kołodniańska, and Woronowicko-Tereszkowska lines, the archive always remained in the possession of the younger line, settled in Woronowica. Another part of the collection, after the forced sale of Woronowica, shared the wandering fate of Ludgard Grocholski, who successively acquired various estates in Galicia and Russia, then sold them. They were thus packed and unpacked several times, transported from place to place.
Since the Woronowica palace was close to the public road, in front of it from the entrance side stretched only a circular lawn, planted with low shrubs.
The park was laid out behind the house and on its sides. The main avenue, lined with linden trees, formed a semicircle corresponding to the shape of the residence. Another avenue, perpendicular to the palace, led to a nearby lake.
In addition to lindens, the Woronowica garden, initially with a regular layout with trimmed trees, later typically landscape, still had many Italian poplars, elms, hornbeams, chestnuts, spruces, ashes, and white acacias. Compositionally, the park was connected to an orchard.
Not very far from the palace stood a brick, single-nave church dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, also founded by Franciszek Ksawery Grocholski in 1793. However, this temple was completed only several years later by Jan Nepomucen Grocholski. Its facade was decorated with doubled Ionic pilasters. On the sides of the triangular pediment with volutes stood stone vases. This building was covered with a smooth, gabled roof. Next to it stood a bell tower. The churchyard was separated from the road by a low wall with railings.
Roman Aftanazy “The History of Residences in the Former Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bracław Voivodeship” Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolińskich Publishing, Wrocław 1996
Map of Adolf Grocholski’s Estate in Vinnytsia in 1858
Signature in the Vinnytsia Regional Museum in Ukraine – КВ11456/ПЛГ1622
