Lubno – St Joseph’s Church

History

   The village of Lubno (Liebenow, Libenow) was first recorded in documents in 1243, when the Bishop of Lubusz transferred the tithe from it to the Templar Order. In 1263, the village became the property of the Brandenburg margraves, during whose, probably at the end of the 13th century, a stone church was built in Lubno. The first mention of it was made in 1337 in the land book of margrave Ludwig the Elder, i.e. in the register of villages located in the area of New March, prepared for tax purposes.
   In the 16th century, the church was taken by the Protestant community, which could have resulted in the introduction of the first early modern changes to the interior, related to a different form of the new liturgy. During the renovation in 1796, the building was plastered, the medieval northern portal was bricked up, and most of the windows were transformed. In the 19th century, a neo-Romanesque brick sacristy was added from the north. In the years 1985 – 1988 a thorough renovation of the church was carried out.

Architecture

   The church was built of uniformly sized granite stones, laid in regular layers, with the corners reinforced with ashlar of slightly larger dimensions. The building obtained the simplest form possible for a sacral building, as it consisted of an aisleless, towerless nave on a rectangular plan with dimensions of 21.3 x 12.1 meters, without the presbytery separated externally. The whole was covered with a gable, steeply arranged roof, ended with triangular gables from the east and west. On the eastern side of the southern wall, there may have originally been a sacristy.
   The entrance to the interior led from the west and north. Simple, devoid of decorations façades were also separated by narrow, pointed windows, forming a triad in the eastern wall, a characteristic motif for rural churches of the Western Pomerania region from the second half of the 13th century, perhaps adopted under the influence of Cistercian buildings.
  
The interior of the nave was not vaulted. It was probably covered with a flat, wooden ceiling over which there was an attic with a roof truss. The presbytery was not architecturally separated, the priestly part could at most be separated by a light partition of the rood screen or a difference in the level of the floor height. The modest decor was probably limited to the altar, which was in semi-darkness, placed in front of the eastern triad of windows.

Current state

   The church has preserved the perimeter walls of the nave, covered with an early modern annex from the north. The western gable was later rebuilt with bricks. In the northern wall there is an original entrance portal, now bricked up, while the western one has been transformed. Similarly, most of the windows have been modernized, only in the eastern façade there are three windows which, although covered with modern bands, still have narrow openings. From the south, toothing is visible of a non-preserved annex, presumably a medieval sacristy.

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Biała karta ewidencyjna zabytków architektury i budownictwa, kościół filialny pw. św. Józefa, W.Łopuch, nr 2495, Lubno 1986.