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Cheia Village is a scattered settlement with houses gathering towards the center. It is set in a valley on both sides of the Cheia river.
In the past, the forest was covering the surrounding hills and mountains. The geographical location of this village, filled with orchards and pastures, determined the occupation of the people living here: raising small domestic animals, especially goats and sheep, forestry and, to a lesser extent, agriculture and bee keeping.
Some sources point out that the settlement was built in the sixteenth century, when a group of people, in an indirect rebellion to the tax system and religious oppression of the Habsburg Empire, formed an isolated settlement.
These men were guides of caravans filled with goods. They were also guides for those who wanted to cross Transylvania’s unsafe forests.
In the quiet times, in the nineteenth century, the locals started having sedentary occupations like raising cattle and gave up a nomadic lifestyle.
Only a few homes are still seen today, hidden in the new forest, where in the past people were mowing the grass.
Cheia Village is for us a return to the ancient lands, to the traditional customs, which tend to be lost forever when forgotten. Although deserted almost entirely, one can still feel the rustle of the old settlements with traces left by the mill on the water. We’ve seen places and listened to real stories about how many lives people had to live in these places to build a house, a barn, a fence, a mill, and above all to keep it in the family. For each one, the spiritual and the material parts, weighing differently.
Our effort, a pleasant one, is to revive a traditional household with all that it means and equally to live in it by also nurturing the spiritual side. How many lives do we need to turn this dream into reality? The answer will come from the children of our children. We have set out from the beginning to honor our origins and do our best to show our children that the living and the traditional crafts are alive, as long as one practices and feels them.
The main entrance in Cheia Village household it is a gate called “vranita cu boc” in Romanian. This type of gate has three components:
“bocul” which is a thick oak log fixed in the ground
“vranita” which is a partially cut beam on 4 sides. At one end remains the rough log for counterweight,
the pillar in which “vranita” is fastened.
The Cellar is the second construction of our household. The plan has two units:
Usually, in Cheia Village, the cellar is built by a local craftsman. We had to find a good spot in the hill, we had to dig the place, we had to use stone to build and we had to tie it with “tina”(clay). For the vault, we used a bent willow tree after we trimmed it quarter size. We supported the willow tree in a tilted plan on the longitudinal walls.
For ventilation, we used the recommendations we found in “Permaculture” written by Sepp Holzer. We want to thank “Tei” Publishing House for printing this amazing book which helped us very much. The foundation of the cellar has a very characteristic feature. We copied some archaic technique used in building huts. The framing and the support arrangements of the elements ( beams and rafters), reflect the use of this technique.The Guesthouse was relocated from the small neighboring village called Dupa Deal, belonging to the Ponor village, and has been listed since 1900.
When I saw this house for the first time, my heart ached due to the advanced degradation. The craftsman taught me that I shouldn’t judge the book by its cover, so to decide if this house can undergo a disassembly, relocation and perfect renovation of the design, we had to do a careful inspection of the wood and the structure of the roof.
Through these western lands, I had been able to see the last 70-year-old straw roofs that looked perfectly preserved. I think it is one of the crafts that will disappear with its craftsmen and the secrets of a lasting roof will disappear too. I tried to understand, to “ steal “ from the craftsman the secrets which could not be explained.
We worked hard for a full day and our energy was drained but the roof skeleton was done. At this stage, it looked like Noah’s ark, and the last thing we needed was rain.
The base of the roof or the area where the eaves were located, is about 80 cm wide. On this surface, spears were placed from place to place to fix the first layer of straw.
The technique is similar to that of raising the haystacks. A man is on the roof and takes up the straw from the people on the bottom, straw which must necessarily be dried and trampled to bind to each other.
And finally, after 5 days, we had a roof of about 6 tons. We had no more fear of bad weather.
After, we had a break so that everything could create a symbiosis between everything that is old and new.
We have two doors, one for the entrance and one inside between the rooms. We used “tatani” (hinges) to connect the doors to the wall. The entrance is through “târnaț” (porch) into the “tinda” (small room/mudroom). The interior is very modest and pleasant in the same time.
“Tinda” ( small room/ mudroom ) has multiple purposes: passage, food preparation and hand work. In front of the entrance we have a “ploaptan” which is an archaic system, a fixed stove built with a mix of clay and stone. This stove has a metal cooktop and is used for cooking.
The stove extends underneath the “camnita” ( the bed ). “Camnita” ( the bed ) is built entirely of clay and stone, a traditional system for the settlements of this region where the winters are cold and last for several months.
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