Page 265 - Changing Living Spaces

The Neverlake: Water and Land Management in a Dry and Soilless Place

ter management in the Karst were treated in our recently published book
on the history of the Karst cultural landscape (Panjek 2015). In 2016, we
arranged an excursion to Štanjel; he accompanied us there and showed
us the area that the locals call ‘Jezero’ (‘Lake’), especially the remains of
walls in two adjacent ravines and the traces of a stone canal and a well
in the area of the valley. At that moment it became clear, or rather it was
only logical, that the ‘Lake’ of Štanjel that Mr. Švagelj showed us was the
same ‘small lake’ that had been drained in 1608 and converted into 55
gardens.
On this basis, we have also examined other historical and cartograph-
ic sources. First, we will present the main findings in chronological order,
which we arrived at by using different types of sources. Then, in the con-
cluding section, we will give a general explanation in which geographical
methods will also be used.
The original land register of the ‘community and tabor of Štanjel in the
Karst’ (Sup und Tabor Sanct Daniel, am Carst gelegen, acquired by Johann
Kaspar von Cobenzl) from 1631 contains two separate lists of those who
owned some land and those who only paid dues on hearths (houses;
ASGO, AC, AD, b. 199, fasc. 511). Since the community of Štanjel also in-
cluded some of the neighbouring villages, it is not possible to determine
with certainty which and how many of the named householders were the
heads of households in the settlement (tabor) of Štanjel. Considering the
fact that the land register mentions a total of 154 people who were obliged
to pay land and/or house dues, it is very likely that the draining and divi-
sion into 55 gardens affected only members of the Štanjel settlement and
not of all villages.
The next step in time takes us two centuries into the future, to the
Franciscean cadastre. The maps of the cadastral community of Štanjel,
made in the 1820s, show a watercourse at the exit of the ravine at the
northwestern end of the ‘Neverlake’ doline, marked in blue. This is fol-
lowed by a reservoir and canal that runs down the centre of the doline
and ends before reaching the lower section. The only marked body of wa-
ter in the lower part of the valley is a karst pond. The remaining land is
farmland. These maps from the Franciscean cadastre show that at that
time (1820-30), the upper part of the system (canal-reservoir-canal) was
still in operation, while the canal in the lower part of the doline had al-
ready been levelled and converted into fields, leaving the reservoir in the
form of a karst pond (ASts, CF, Mappe, S. Daniele (Štanjel), 427b).

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