Hont

The castle of Hont is located in Hungary, at the northern end of the foothills of the Börzsöny Mountains, but the former castle of the Comes has completely disappeared. Hont is a small village of barely 500 inhabitants along the Ipoly River, but it was one of the earliest seats of the Comes of the county, an episcopal seat, an earth castle, in the Árpád era. Location on the map: https://tinyurl.com/yeef5fkt

Hont County was vast, encompassing the vast uninhabited or very sparsely populated forests of the Hungarian Highlands, the Zólyom forest district and the later Kishont County, as well as the areas later annexed to Nógrád County.

Hont Castle was built on a flat peninsula extending into the floodplain of the Ipoly River, also known as the Ipoly Corner. Over the centuries, the bed of the Ipoly River has moved 4-500 meters away from the castle, but even today, during floods, the water still floods the areas under the peninsula. The shape of the castle is an elongated rectangle with rounded corners. The two long sides are slightly tapered in the middle, but this is probably the result of a recent disturbance. Its two diameters are 123 m and 55-75 m respectively, and it covers an area of about 0.75 ha. It slopes slightly to the north and becomes horizontal again at the end. Its sides are steep all around.

All traces of the former castle have disappeared from the surface, and in the 1880s a considerable amount of earth was removed to build the railroad. A sunken area in the moat separating the peninsula is still visible.

The excavation of the castle of Hont led to the observation that a so-called transitional type of castle can be detected, which is a stepping stone in the development between the clan chieftain’s castles and the early feudal castles. The excavations at Hont revealed pottery typical of the early (10th-11th) centuries. The timber structure of the rampart is of the carpenter type with wooden joints. This type of timber-framed wall is common in Hungary for the 10th-12th century castles excavated so far, such as those of Borsod, Moson, Sopron and Zalaszentiván.

Borovszky Samu wrote about it in his work on the counties of Hungary: “… According to some sources it was destroyed in the civil wars at the end of the 13th century, during the reign of Kings Kun-László and Endre III, in the battles of the warring lords of the country. During an excavation carried out in the middle of the last century, human remains were found in a courtyard of the castle, among the rusty iron of battle axes, and the excavated objects were said to date back to the 12th century.”

Although the Chronicon Pictum Chronicle did not mention the castle itself, it is possible that it already existed at that time. We know from the chronicles that the knights of Hont and Pázmán, who, in the German manner, girded the young prince Vajk with swords before he went to battle against Koppány, moved to Hungary in the time of Grand Duke Géza. The Knight of Hont may have been the eponym of the castle and the first Comes of the county that was later organised around it.

In 1075, the Hont castle was mentioned in connection with a murky stream running through the Hont forest, presumably polluted with oil (“per silvam Huntiensem quae Hungaricae Surkuscher vocatur”).

The first documentary mention of the Hont Castle (“Castrum de Hunt”) is found in the charter of King András II in 1219, when the king confirmed the ownership of Herwin, son of Rudger, of certain lands in the Hont County, which had been taken from the Hont Castle estate by King Imre and given to Comes Rudger. The increasingly insignificant status of the castle is illustrated by the charters which donated parts of the castle’s property.

1231: King Béla IV confirmed the church of Esztergom in possession of the lands of Ság and Ebecl. In this charter it was mentioned as “Castrum Hunth”. According to some sources, the wooden-framed castle successfully resisted the Mongols in 1241, but was destroyed by fire in the 13th century, possibly by the Tatars.

In a document dated September 11, 1246, King Béla IV gave Miklós the son of Detre the land of Balassa (later Balassagyarmat), which had been separated from the castle of Hont, in exchange for the lands of Újfalu and Palugya in Liptó. In this document Hont was mentioned as “castri nostri de Hunth”. In 1256, Péter, a so-called “castle servant”, received half of the Ság land belonging to the castle of Hont as an exchange. At that time a knight named Boleszló commanded the castle guard.

In 1284, the settlement of Hont was donated. A document dating from 1264 also suggests that the patron of the church here was St Eustace. The village was for a time usurped by Csák Máté, then became a royal estate after the consolidation.

In 1295 Lodomér, Archbishop of Esztergom, petitioned and won the donation of the village of Palást as a part of the castle of Hont from King András III. “…quam a nobis nomine terrae castri nostri Hunthensis petierat sibi dari”.

Research suggests that the castle was destroyed by fire, which, according to the finds, occurred in the 13th century. This could have been caused by the Mongol invasion or by feudal anarchy at the end of the century. It was never repaired, and the village occupied the site of the fortress.

In 1350, a charter was issued for the purpose of settling the lands of Iva and Hacak south of Jászberény (“populorwn congregatione decorare”), which belonged to the castle of Hont and the monastery of Ság (now Ipolyság). There were still mentions of the castle until 1358, but always in connection with the donation of a land.

In 1390, King Zsigmond donated the village together with the Drégely manor to the Tari family, but from 1424 it was again under royal administration. Finally, in 1438, King Albert gave the village to Archbishop Pálóci György of Esztergom as a gift in perpetuity – from then until 1945, the Archbishopric of Esztergom owned the land in the village.

For two centuries, the history of the village has again been incomplete, with only recent traces of the Turkish occupation surviving. At that time, the population of the village suffered greatly from the harassment of the Turks: in the turmoil of the 17th century, the population was so tormented that they fled. This is confirmed by the record of 1630, which lists Hont among the villages that perished.

Some of the fleeing inhabitants took refuge from the enemy in a cave carved into the rock called the Dragon’s Breach (Sárkánytörés). According to diary entries of the same period, the Ottoman bey of Nógrád Castle slaughtered all the heads of the families of the village of Hont, some sixty men, for refusing to pay taxes. In the 19th century, many human bones were dug up around the chapel of Felvégi in the village, which are associated with the massacres of the Turkish bey of Nógrád.

The castle of Hont was already being explored in the 19th century. In 1882, Pesty Frigyes listed 13th-century data after 1219. It is interesting to note that the name of Hont was originally Hunt, and that the inhabitants of the village called it by that name. In 1896 Reiszig Ede mentioned the same. In the early 19th century, the site was visited by Soós Elemér, who said that the Ipoly river once flowed around the castle.

In 1914, World War I broke out. A large part of Hont’s male population went to the front, 27 of whom never returned home. After the war was lost, in January 1919, the Czech army crossed the Ipoly River and occupied the railway line. Only after heavy fighting did they manage to drive them back behind the Ipoly. Despite this, army movements continued in the region until the end of August.

In 1972 the excavations of the researchers Sándorfi György, Miklós Zsuzsa and Nováki Gyula clarified the structure of the battlements of the castle. It was Nováki Gyula who managed to clarify the most important data. He revealed the structure of the former battlements in the south-western corner. Elements of the beam structure of the rampart were found 70 cm below the present surface. He found that two vertical walls of horizontally stacked beams were built parallel to each other at a distance of about 1.70 meters.

The two beam walls were connected from the inside by transverse beam walls, the latter being locked into the vertical walls. A series of cassettes were built up, tightly connected to each other. The length of each cassette, according to the excavated section, was about 1.40 meters long, filled with local sandy soil. In 2011, Mordovin Maxim carried out an initial archaeological excavation.

Nováki concluded that the destruction of the rampart was caused by a fire that raged here, all the beams were charred, and he found similar wood remains and scorched earth in the interior. At the excavation site, 5 beams were found one above the other in the inner wall, leaving the wall 70 cm high. The sides of the beams were straight and smooth, so they could have been carved with an axe. They lay with angular, elongated joints underneath each other, into which the connecting, transverse beams, with straight notched pins, were joined, lying inside the structure. These connecting walls remained in place for about 60 cm.

The beam wall of the inner side is strongly inclined towards the interior of the castle, indicating that the beam structure was once free-standing and vertical. The outer beam wall was completely collapsed, with only four of its collapsed remains lying on the ground. The remains of the rampart were known from two other locations, according to local residents. A large quantity of charcoal was found on the edge of the castle, 15-20 meters north of the excavated beam structure.

In addition, the eastern edge of the fortress was leveled around 1970 and a lot of red burnt soil was found, presumably from the rampart structure. Thus, the rampart surrounded the fortress. In the trenches dug along the southern and northern edges of the castle, no traces of the rampart were found, but the beginnings of the inner side of the once deep southern rampart had already been excavated, and a round millstone was also found there. In one of the ditches dug in the inner area, near the southwestern corner, a small pit and a lot of grain (wheat, some oats) from the life of the castle were found.

Today, the area of the castle is the northern edge of the municipality of Hont. Densely built up with houses and farm buildings, only the narrow courtyards and small kitchen gardens give a glimpse of the castle. The continuous occupation of the castle since its origin has completely erased any fortifications. Only the position of the peninsula and the traces of the once deep moat that protected it from the hills are still visible today. Traces of the former moat can be seen in Hunyadi street.

Nowadays, the area has been largely depopulated, many houses have been demolished, but the area of the former fortress has not become any more visible. Locals believe that the tunnel in the village’s centre went all the way to Drégely Castle.

Sources: https://varlexikon.hu/hont , Hungarian Wikipedia, http://www.turistautak.hu, and Nováki Gyula – Feld István – Guba Szilvia – Mordovin Maxim – Sárközy Sebestyén: Nógrád megye várai az őskortól a kuruc korig.

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