Agios Georgios is a predominantly Greek community in the occupied part of the Keryneia district. It lies 5 kilometres west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 20 metres, on the shore. On its rocky coast, below the small church of Agios Fanourios, the rocks are full of fossil bones of the Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus.¹ In the 1960 census it had 822 inhabitants, of whom 618 were Greeks and 203 Turks.

Name

It took its name from Saint Georgios (George), to whom its church is dedicated. According to the Union of Communities of the Keryneia District, the settlement was originally called “Alakatia”, from the many wells with “alakatia”, that is, the water-wheels with which water was drawn for the orchards, or simply “Kampos”. It took the name Agios Georgios later, when, as the village tradition says, the icon of the saint was found in a cave, and the church was then built.² On the land of the village the official gazetteer of Cyprus records the place-name “Palialakaton”.³

Founding and first records

Agios Georgios is a newer settlement. According to the Union of Communities, its first inhabitants came down from the neighbouring villages of Karmi and Trimithi to the coastal plain, where they had their orchards with the wells, and little by little the first families settled there permanently, around 1900.⁴ On the land of the village the Gazetteer also marks the locality Votamos as a settlement.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village is dedicated to Saint Georgios. It stands in the north-eastern part of the old village, very close to the sea, and the 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus dates it to the 19th–20th century.⁶

In the western part of the village, on a rocky shore, is the cave of Agios Fanourios with the small church built above it. According to the village tradition recorded by the American archaeologist David Reese, Saint Fanourios was a young man from Asia Minor who crossed to Cyprus in a boat, with his horse as his only companion. When he came ashore and tried to ride up the steep rock, the horse slipped and both were killed. The inhabitants called the bones in the rocks the bones of the saint, or, according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, of his horse. In reality they are fossils of the Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus, and scientists named its genus Phanourios, after the saint. The inhabitants dug out the bones, ground them to powder and drank it with water as a remedy for almost every illness, a custom that, according to Reese, still persisted in the early 1970s.⁷

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the inhabitants grew olives together with cereals from early on, and later, intensively, citrus fruit, mainly lemons, and vegetables. The village was also known for its pottery. Because it was so close to Keryneia and on the sea, it came to know tourism early: before 1974 it was a favourite place of residence for European pensioners, especially British, and many holiday houses were built around the village and near the sea.⁸

The Union of Communities adds that Agios Georgios was originally the vegetable garden of Keryneia, until the orchards became lemon groves, which were more profitable. In the village there were potteries and small factories that made jams and lemonades, extracted pomace oil from olive stones and packed olive oil. The great fair of the village was on Clean Monday, when thousands of locals and foreigners gathered there.⁹ In 1944 the Agios Georgios Co-operative Credit Society was founded, in 1947 the Co-operative Society of Olive Growers and in 1959 the Co-operative Grocery.

Population

The population of Agios Georgios grew quickly in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 26 inhabitants in 1881, 17 in 1891, 21 in 1901, 44 in 1911 and 89 in 1921.¹⁰ In 1931 the village had 157 inhabitants, all of them Christians, and in 1946 380, of whom 375 were Orthodox and 5 of another religion (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 822 inhabitants, 618 Greeks, 203 Turks and one Maronite, and in 1973 967 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 142 pupils and five teachers.

National struggles

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 48 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Georgios, which lies between Keryneia and the beach of Pente Mili, where the Turkish troops landed, was captured by the Turkish army. Its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. The European Commission of Human Rights found it established that on 2 August 1974 an organised operation was carried out to expel the civilians who had remained in Agios Georgios, Trimithi and Karmi: they were taken by bus to the cease-fire line in Lefkosia. The same report records testimony about rapes of women by Turkish soldiers in the village, and other inhabitants were held in detention at the Dome Hotel in Keryneia.¹¹ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of its inhabitants.

Fourteen inhabitants of Agios Georgios, nine soldiers and five civilians, were recorded as missing. Seven were lost in the village itself and the other seven elsewhere, at Sygchari, Pikro Nero, Vasileia, Mia Milia and Kaimakli. The remains of seven have been located and identified, while seven are still missing. Four more civilians from the village were killed elsewhere, at Fterycha and Agios Epiktitos. On the land of Agios Georgios seven people killed in 1974 are recorded, six soldiers and one civilian, all in the village and its area.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Georgios into a mosque; the crosses and the bell were removed from the roof, and a small metal minaret was set up on the bell tower. The cemetery, which lay in the southern part of the church enclosure, can no longer be located, because most of the area was turned into a paved square.¹² The chapel and the cave of Agios Fanourios were desecrated and looted, and the chapel was used as a dwelling.