The village of Chminianska Nová Ves was established in the original village of Svinia. In 1248 it passed from the ownership of Banka to the ownership of Šariš Castle.
In the centre of the village, close to the church, behind the tall trees of the historical park, there is a splendid noble mansion from the Baroque period. It was built by the family of the Merse de Szinye branch of the noble family, continuously inhabited until the middle of the 19th century, when the family moved to the manor house in Chminianské Jakubovany and to the old family mansion in Jarovnice in 1853.
The manor house stands on a flat terrain in the river terrace of the Svinka River. The ground floor plan of the manor is rectangular with a projecting elliptical bay on the north side and a square bay on the south side. The layout is a longitudinal double-tract, while the whole building has a basement. The two longitudinal tracts of the basement are covered by vaulted vaults. The central room of the ground floor is the hall in the northern tract with a high corbelled vault, where fragments of an illusory mural painting from the 18th-19th centuries can be seen under the younger paintwork. The extent of the paintings is perhaps much greater, as this type of painting used to cover not only all the walls but also the vaults in manor houses. The historic window panes have also been preserved in the space, which have recesses in the shape of a compressed arch with undercutting and sloping lining. The other rooms of the northern wing are covered with Prussian vaults on strips with partially preserved stucco decoration at the top of the vaults; the building has a basement.
The manor house was used sporadically for representational reasons until 1968 (1970) by the richtár Jozsef Balazs (Baláž, 1888), from the Balas (de Villa Bala) family from nearby Ondrašovce, whose great-great-grandmother came from the Merse family. He maintained the tradition of the Merse balls, where nobility from Novohrad, Zemplín, Šariš, Spiš and Turiec came. The balls were legendary and to this day there are still memorials who call them the event of the season. It is said that the manor house is connected by a passageway under the stream, nowadays also by a highway, with the nearby forest, where there is a natural cave formation - a fissure. It was possible to escape from the manor to Ondrašovce if necessary.
Near the manor house there is a nature and landscape park in the shape of an irregular rectangle with historical greenery from the period after the middle of the 18th century. It was landscaped at the end of the 19th century and in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1903 there was a big fire in the village and after it the manor house was apparently repaired. The reconstruction was still going on after 1945. Since 1959 the manor house has been used as a kindergarten, a community centre and a police station.
Source/photo: pamiatkynaslovensku.sk
