CAVE DWELLERS IN HUNGARY

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6630, 8 June 1928, Page 2

CAVE DWELLERS IN HUNGARY

In Budatoteny, on the outskirts of Budapest, about a thousand persons have been living for the past eighty years in stone caves situated under a cemetery, through which their chimneys are trained to the surface (writes the correspondent of the * Observer!). In IS3S, after great floods. had destroyed many houses, and rebuilding on a fairly large scale was necessary, work was begun with the chalk stone quarries at Budateteny. Teh years later, at the time of the. Freedom War, the workers found the natural caves in the quarry convenient hiding places, and began to hew themselves out tworoomed dwellings—a labour which usually lasted three months— and to carve such objects of furniture as were possible out of stone. These cave dwellings had the advantage of being, rent free, the property of their makers ever afterwards. Although most of them still belong to the . families inhabiting them, profiteering'has none the less crept in, and some of thq cave-dwellers now own eight or ten dwellings which they rent at a profit of eighty to a hundred Bongo (£9 to £l2} a year. The cave dwellers are so attached to their homes that they would be unwilling to exchange them even, for a brand new village with every modern eonvonienee. The community is ar orderly, hard-working one, and thieved are unknown to it. The caves are declared to be warm in winter and cool in summer. The infant mortality is somewhat high, but longevity is the rule among the grown-ups. The community elects a mayor to watch over its interests and represent it “above ground,” who employs a vice-mayor, a postman, and a policeman. A side industry of ,the village is mushroom growing, which is done in large underground caves; but recreation is not neglected, for the village possesses a powerful loud speaker to enliven its leisure hours.