A manor (estate) is a tangible expression of land ownership and
management arrangements the origin of which dates from before
the establishment and prosperity of the Lithuanian State. The historic
manor with its multiple functions is the main and most stable
land-based institution characteristic of Lithuanian countryside.
Formerly, manors were the property of the State (the King, Grand
Duke of Lithuania or State institutions), church, noblemen: in the
recent ages, they turn to the property of owners with very different
background.
Eventually, the size of the Lithuanian manor and its general
planned spatial structure as well as the pattern of land-tenure and
land-ownership changed. Over various periods of development,
manors could include a farmstead (or a few farmsteads), manor
land, so-called “palivarkai”1
, villages, boroughs, and could even
include towns or parts of towns, rivers, lakes and forests, meadows,
industrial complexes, roadhouses, networks of roads and byways,
hydraulic engineering facilities and other functional elements.
Manors differed from one another both by their infrastructure and
cultural environment as well as by economic capacity and social
structure