Church/ Chapel
The first records date back to 1327: there is a “rector ecclesiae parochialis” who has income from Blumberg and from 1337, when there are 4 church grounds in Blumberg, the parish then belongs to the Kostrzyn deanery and passes the tithes to one of the Lubuskie canons.
In 1538, it is written about church in Kamien Wielki as a branch of Blumberg. In the 16th century ( Reformation ), the parish was taken over by Evangelicals, but the parish status remained unchanged until the beginning of the 20th century.
Archive Andrzej Wysoczański
After the Second World War, the acquisition of the Lutheran church by Polish Catholics and its consecration under the invocation of St. Adalbert the Bishop took place on April 7, 1946. At that time, the church belonged to the parish of Witnica, and since 1959 it has been a branch of St. Anthony Padewski’s church in Kamień Wielki.
The body of the building consists of a stone and brick neo-Gothic body built on the plan of a cross with a wide transept with a separate triangular closed presbytery, erected between 1867 and 1868 and a plastered brick Baroque tower topped with a wooden lighthouse with a helmet covered with copper sheet, built in 1737. The tower was also renovated in 1834. The signs of 1867 chrich which was narrower and lower are visible on the eastern wall of the tower in the attic part of the church.
Inside the tower there are periodically operating bells and a clock from George Richter’s workshop in Berlin. Thanks to the synchronisation of the mechanisms, in the past it was possible to hear the bells ringing at full hour.
The interior of the church is modest. During the Seven Years’ War in 1758 it was devastated and robbed by the Russians, which is reported in detail and interestingly by the then pastor Christian Gottfried Ludecus. The church (and the school) suffered a similar fate in 1945 from Soviet soldiers.
In the years between the wars th church owned 2 candlesticks, silver plated from tin, founded by a merchant family from Frankfurt in 1764, so still for the old temple.
Nowadays for the attaeniton deserve the baptismal font, organ, wooden pulpit and recently renovated stained-glass windows.
In the basement of the church at the beginning of the 20th century, heating was installed (not used at present), which was used by Polish villigaress after World War II.
In the vault of the presbytery, the original painting decorations from before 1945 were restored during the communist era by the local painter, Henryk Szarzyński. He was also the author of surface paintings depicting biblical scenes decorating the side walls of the temple. During last renovation in the 2000s, the decision was made by then parish priest to paint over the paintings. To this day, only the oil painting of the patron of the church of St. Adalbert Bishop, painted by the mentioned artist, remains in the altar.
Only memories are left of the church cemetery.
Photo: Robert Furmaniak