Woronowica was the nest of the Woronowicki family of unknown coat of arms.
Ivan’s daughter, Olena Woronowicka, probably the last of the family on the distaff side, having married Michał Łaska of the Leliwa coat of arms, son of Olechny, heir of Łasków and Dziunków, deputy judge of the Bracław and Winnica lands (died probably after 1606), brought him Woronowica, as well as Saborów, Sefanówka, and Soroczyn as dowry.
After Michał senior, part of Woronowica and Łasków with appendages was inherited by one of his three sons, Michał Łasko, junior, town 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, a Bracław military (1640) and town judge of Winnica (1642), who was married twice: first to Marusza Bohdana Obodeńska, heiress of Pietniczan and Pokalew, and secondly to Katarzyna Hańska, secundo voto Grocholska, tertio voto Radomyska. After Teodor Łaska, many children remained. One of the daughters, Teofila, having married Marcin Radzimiński of the Lubicz coat of arms, brought him the largest part of the estate as dowry, both from her parents and grandparents, including half of Woronowica. The other half of this estate and Stefanówka were in the possession of the third son of deputy judge Michał Łaska, Bohdan, Bracław treasurer, married to Katarzyna Stawecka. Since he died childless, both estates, with certain legacies to the widow, passed to Teofilia Łasków Radzimińska. Anna Radzimińska, stewardess of Chernigov, having married Michał z Grocholic and Grabów Grocholski of the Syrokomla coat of arms, land judge of the Bracław voivodeship (1744), colonel of the royal army and regimental commander of the Ukrainian party, brought him the Woronowica and Pietniczan key as 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 Michał’s youngest son, Franciszek Ksawery Grocholski (died in 1792), crown sword-bearer, married to Helena Lesznicka (Leśnicka), heiress of the Czerwon and Norzyń 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 of 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 was able to return to the country and save the inheritance 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 Arabian horse breeding. He left no offspring with either his first wife, Otylia of the Poniatowski family, or his second, Wanda of the Radziwiłł family from the Berdyczów line.
After Adolf Grocholski’s death, the Woronowica key went 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, actively engaged in the 1863 Uprising, belonging to the so-called “Niemirów organization” and serving as the treasurer of the Bracław district. Although the Woronowica key was not confiscated from him, by the tsarist decree of December 10, 1865, it had to be sold. Grocholski was saved from exile to Siberia and confiscation of the estate by a local peasant, Ivan Mistota, a former court Cossack, who managed to warn the owner at night 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 former eastern provinces of Poland, the purchaser of an estate could only be a Russian. Woronowica was therefore bought by Mikołaj Możajskij, married to Miss Czichaczow, daughter of the well-known admiral from Kuryłowce Murowane – Mikołaj.
Before World War I, when the regulations restricting the rights of Poles had slightly eased, the Grocholski family planned to buy back these properties from Russian hands. The outbreak of the revolution in 1917 thwarted these plans.
In the years around 1780 – 1790, Franciszek Ksawery Grocholski built in Woronowica a classicist palace with a strictly symmetrical layout, resembling a short, open horseshoe, somewhat reminiscent of the Myślewicki Palace in Warsaw’s 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 “disbanded Cossacks” was placed there, supposedly for 100 horses. On the opposite side of the ceremonial courtyard, on the axis of the palace, stood the main entrance gate, consisting of two tall quadrilateral pillars and two much lower side 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 second floor had a residential character, while the first was designed as a bel etage. The front facade of the building was accentuated by a three-axis, false avant-corps, emphasized at the corners by rustication.
Next to it stood a portico, serving simultaneously as a covered driveway.
In the lower tier, the plinth of the portico was formed by 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 great order, encompassing the middle and highest tier of the palace. They supported an entablature decorated with a frieze of plant grotesque motifs. The portico was crowned by a delicate dentil cornice and a very prominent bracketed one, with a low, semicircularly bulging attic at the front. Its tympanum was also filled with stucco. The avant-corps 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 balcony with a balustrade of balusters led to the central, tripartite porte-fenêtre set in the frames of columns. Above it was a large semicircular window, and on the sides, there were bipartite porte-fenêtres, each consisting of ten panes. The second-floor windows were square-shaped with four panes. The side porte-fenêtres were particularly richly framed, topped with garlands and triangular pediments. The two-axis side sections of the facade had a similar decoration to the avant-corps part. The architect, widely using porte-fenêtres, also placed them in the entirely rusticated ground floor of the palace.
On both sides of the main body, diagonally to its facade, two two-story and two-axis pavilions with a square plan were erected. They also had a rusticated facade on the ground floor. On the first floor, the rustication covered only the corners.
Here too, instead of windows, only porte-fenêtres were used in profiled frames. Short, slightly curved wings connected both pavilions with the main body. They were also equipped with porte-fenêtres on both floors. The central ones on the first floor were shaped similarly to the portico part. The pavilions and both wings were crowned with a wide garland frieze, interrupted by ram heads. The garden facade was treated as secondary. However, similar to the driveway, the piano nobile, equipped exclusively with porte-fenêtres, was separated from the ground floor and the second floor by a smooth lower band, and the upper one was slightly wider and slightly profiled. Vertical rusticated strips also delineated the three central axes of the representative tier, thus creating a slightly enriching false avant-corps in the garden facade. The side porte-fenêtres of the bel-etage were only framed in smooth frames, while the three central openings were topped with triangular, decorative pediments, supported on brackets. At these three axes, there might have originally been a small terrace, now non-existent, with fan-shaped stairs leading directly to the garden (as in Łabunie in the former Bełsk voivodeship). The central body of the palace with side pavilions in the curvature of the middle tier was also enriched with a tripartite porte-fenêtre, set in the frames of two columns. The columns, cornices, brackets crowning all facades, rustication, window and door frames, and stucco had a white color, vividly contrasting 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, gable roof. As indicated by Orda’s drawing, 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 articulated with paired rusticated strips, placed in corners and inter-window parts. This building was covered with a smooth, four-pitched roof.
The main body of the palace had an internal two-bay, enfilade layout. 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 no detailed information about the palace interiors. After the revolution, the entire central body and the right wing were rebuilt, losing their original decor.
We know only that on the first floor, in both bays, there were once salons, mostly called “mosaic” due to their stucco walls.
Among the most beautiful was the dining room with a coffered ceiling and the ballroom. All representative rooms were equipped with floors composed in patterns of multicolored parquet and marble fireplaces. The ceilings were covered with rich stucco. Some salons had silk or damask wall coverings.
Under the ceiling coves ran friezes, each with a different theme.
The artistic value of the plastic decoration of the palace’s representative rooms can be evidenced 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 net into small squares. They were filled with rosettes in the form of different types of flowers.
From the two large rosettes composed of oak leaves and surrounded by a wreath of acanthus leaves, crystal chandeliers once hung. The plafond is surrounded by a wide frieze, in which as repeating motifs were used acanthus scrolls, voluted in the form of the winged goddess of victory Nike, with a lioness and a lion, allegory of strength, woven into them. Between the volute scrolls with animal elements, there are interludes of vine leaves. These themes repeat on both sides of the longer plafond. Both narrower ends of the frieze above the door openings are divided into three triangular panels framed with profiled frames. 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 decor is located in the left pavilion. It received daylight from three sides. Although it was square, sixteen columns of white polished stucco arranged in a circle gave the impression of having a circular plan. The columns support the entablature of the dome and the cove, covered with wide, slightly profiled cornices and brackets. The vault is divided into sixteen fields, corresponding to the number of columns, narrowing towards the center. The frames are decorated with small rosettes, and the fields within them are covered with stucco with plant motifs, into which figures from the ancient world are woven. The center is occupied by a large rosette of acanthus leaves, surrounded by a circular flower wreath. A chandelier once hung from here as well.
According to family accounts, the Woronowica palace before 1863 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 a lot especially to J.N. Grocholski, who moved many valuable pieces of furniture and family collections there from Tereszki in Volhynia, inherited from his brother Antoni, who died in 1805.
Antoni, the Starokonstantynów marshal, was a great lover of fine arts, so from every trip, he brought either valuable sculptures or paintings to Tereszki.
During his stay in Livorno and Rome in 1797, he acquired there 519 canvases by masters of the French, Dutch, Flemish, and Italian schools, with a presumed original by Titian, which he placed in Tereszki, from where they reached Woronowica.
After the death of Jan Nepomucen Grocholski, both the estates and collections were to be divided among his three sons: Adolf, Ludgard, and Władysław. Since the two younger brothers were to wait several more years for 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 divisions finally took place, it turned out that many paintings were destroyed by moisture and mold. They could not be saved.
What survived was mechanically divided, as a result of which Woronowica lost a lot. In the round column hall, for example, there was a group of marble statues, originally consisting of nine muses and Apollo. After the division, only three muses were left on site, while Apollo and the remaining muses were taken partly to Czerwona, partly to Tereszki. The remaining works of art survived there until the forced sale of the estate. Before leaving Woronowica, Ludgard Grocholski managed to take some of the movable property back to Tereszki, including all historical items, and even some marble fireplaces in the Louis XVI style and many other marbles and artistic values 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 reached the end of the 16th century and only in a few cases concerned its beginnings.
A significant part of the archive also included family and property papers of other families related to the Grocholskis, mainly Woronowicki, Obodeński, Łaski, Sabarowski, and Luba-Radzimiński. They came into the possession of the Grocholskis with the hand of Anna Radzimińska, wife of Michał Andrzej Grocholski. Although 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 collections, 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 stood close to the public road, from the entrance side, there was only a circular lawn planted with low shrubs.
The park was established behind the house and on its sides. The main avenue, lined with lime trees, formed a semicircle corresponding to the shape of the residence. Another avenue, perpendicular to the palace, led to the nearby lake.
Apart from lime trees, the Woronowica garden, initially with a regular layout with trimmed trees, later typically landscaped, also grew many Italian poplars, elms, wych elms, chestnuts, spruces, ashes, and white acacias. Compositionally, the park was connected with a fruit orchard.
Not 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 only completed several years later by Jan Nepomucen Grocholski. Its facade was decorated with paired Ionic pilasters. On the sides of the triangular pediment with volutes stood stone vases. This building was covered with a smooth gable roof. Next to it stood a bell tower. The churchyard was separated from the road by a low wall with pickets.
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 Winnica in 1858
Signature in the Regional Museum in Winnica, Ukraine – КВ11456/ПЛГ1622
