Lipa Castle
(Prepared by: Krzysztof Kędroń)
The Lipa Castle was probably built at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. Its founder is not known, but it is assumed to have been built by a representative of one of the Silesian knightly families. Some stories related to the castle suggest its construction by the Templars associated with a hypothetical commandery in nearby Bolków. The first owner of the castle mentioned in sources was Henryk von Lipa in 1309. It consisted of a three-story stone residential tower with a square plan measuring 7 x 7 meters, and its walls at the ground level were about 1.5 meters thick, and it was surrounded by an oval perimeter wall with a moat.
The modest castle complex was expanded in the 16th century by members of the prominent Silesian von Zedlitz family. A staircase was added to the tower, a residential building with a kitchen was constructed to the south, and a gate tower was built to the west, along with a complex of residential buildings in the western part. The usable area increased to approximately 340 square metres after the expansion.
In 1580, it was sold to the von Reibnitz family, to whom it belonged for over two centuries with interruptions. In the second half of the 18th century, the castle, no longer serving a defensive purpose, fell into decline. Abandoned and no longer in use by the end of the century, it was only used for agricultural and storage purposes, with unused fortification elements serving as a source of cheap building materials. The 1920s were particularly tragic for the buildings. In the 19th century, the owner of Lipa, Julius Fischer, ordered the demolition of part of the lower castle to build a sheepfold, distillery, and barn on his estate.
Better times came for the castle with the arrival of its new owner, Rudolph von Stillfried-Rattoniz, a renowned lawyer and master of ceremonies at the Prussian royal court, who purchased it in 1834 and rebuilt it in the neogothic style. The castle kitchen, considered the oldest surviving one in Silesia, is crowned with a vault that transitions into a chimney shaped like a little pyramid. Such a design only intensified later legends about the Templar origin of the castle and the hidden treasures of the famous and wealthy order.
After the Second World War, until the 1960s, it served as a warehouse for the local State Agricultural Farm (PGR), and it rapidly deteriorated, although it still had window panes, and the residential buildings had ceilings. At the beginning of the 1970s, it was purchased by Bogna Rosnowska Maag, who lived in Switzerland. The renovation work that had begun was soon halted, and the castle was rapidly vandalized, turning into a ruin.
Since 2015, volunteers have been working to clean up the castle, and since 2019, renovation work has been underway to transform the castle into a secured and enduring ruin. Currently, the castle is privately owned.
