Chapel “On the Water” of St. Joseph the Worker, Ojców
The Chapel of St. Joseph, nestled in the picturesque landscape of the Prądnik Valley, has been protected within the remit of the Ojców National Park for over a hundred years. You may be surprised to learn that the chapel has only stood in this remarkable location since the early 20th century. The site where the chapel sits today atop the water was once the home of a bathing facility for visitors sent to the area on doctor’s orders to enjoy the therapeutic waters of the Prądnik Valley, which has been known as something of a “Polish Switzerland” since the early 19th century.
People also came here to admire the lofty, spectacularly shaped rocks and romantic architecture, including the castles in Ojców and Pieskowa Skała. Ojców’s history as a spa location began in the 1850s. Bathing rooms were built for what was known as hydrotherapy; comfortable hotels and villas were built, and the Park area was established. Since the resort was within the part of Poland under the occupation of the Russian Empire, it attracted visitors who weren’t able to travel across borders, for example to health resorts in Galicia which straddled the borders of what today constitute various central and eastern European nations, including Poland. Ojców Spa, as a resort, enjoyed its heydays in the 19th century, At the time, it could get rather crowded in the Prądnik Valley, but for all its attractions, there was a distinct lack of facilities when it came to spiritual health.
Doctor Stanisław Niedzielski, head of the largest institute of natural medicine, suggested that one of the existing bathing facilities, located by Prądnik stream, could be converted into a chapel. According to legend, the Russian Tsar’s ban on erecting Catholic churches technically only applied to land, and not water, so, sensing a loophole in the law, the chapel was built as you see it today – literally on the water. Work in reshaping the existing site into a chapel began in the summer of 1901 and was completed by the autumn. All the work taken care of by local carpenters under the supervision of master builder Ignacy Chmielowski.
The chapel has a timber frame structure composed of vertical and horizontal supported on concrete piling. The walls inside and outside were clad with timber panels. The building is 11 m long, but thanks to the widening of the central section, forms a typically church-like cross-shaped plan with a slightly accentuated transverse arm. Most of its furnishings, including the main altar and side altars, were built in the first years of the chapel’s operation. The chapel was designed with a particular nod to the vernacular folk art style, ever popular in resorts.
Application – a virtual walk around the church
The wooden building stands on wooden and concrete supports embedded in the bottom of a stream. The section of the chapel on the entrance-side is supported by one of the banks of the stream, while the rear section is supported by the opposite bank. The stream flows between the chapel’s supports. The course of the stream bed is about two and a half metres deep. The chapel is topped with a wooden turret with an openwork structure. The cupola itself consists of two parts. The second part of the cupola, located above the first, is topped by a cross. The cupola, in which a small bell hangs, is shaped rather like a lighthouse. The main body of the chapel consists of three parts, the central part slightly wider than the entrance and the rear. Each of the three parts of the chapel is covered with a gently sloping metal roof. The roof of the central section is hipped, with four distinct slopes, and forms the base for the openwork cupola above. The front and rear sections have simple gable roofs. The outer walls of the chapel are clad with light cream-painted planks. Some of the construction planks are darker in colour. Each part of the chapel has tall, narrow, arched windows with stained glass on the side walls.
There are a total of 6 pairs of exterior windows. The slats create a diamond pattern on the windows.
The entrance doorway to the chapel is a wooden, double-leaf door, with a semicircular top. A light openwork metal grate offers further security. The letters, IHS, are inscribed above the door, with a cross connected to the letter H, while under the roof, wooden numbers can be seen, marking the year of the chapel’s construction: nineteen hundred and one. Decorative wooden pegs adorn the upper part of the doorway. Inside the chapel, there are two rows of pews equipped with longitudinal cushions attached to the seats. The internal walls are clad with pale coloured horizontal planks. In the chancel, opposite the entrance, there is a wooden altar. The ceiling is wooden, and flat with horizontal beams. A wooden chandelier hangs from the ceiling, with lamps mounted on its arms.
Further decorative lights illuminate the area by the entrance, and the left and right-hand-side walls of the chapel, attached in pairs. In the corners at the entrance to the chapel, two wooden sculptures of saints are displayed on special shelves. On the walls, small paintings of fourteen Stations of the Cross are painted in oil.
