Angastina is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 33 kilometres west of Ammochostos, 70 metres above sea level, in the geographical region of the Mesaoria, beside the Lefkosia–Ammochostos road.¹ In the 1960 census it had 778 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

In the chronicle of the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron, for events of 1313, the village is written “Angastina”. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, notes that on old maps it appears as “Angestrina”. The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes “Αγγαστίνα”; in many 20th-century lists the name is written “Αγκαστίνα”.²

Archaeological sites

In the summer of 1962, levelling work for the Lefkosia–Ammochostos road uncovered tombs about one and a half kilometres east of Angastina, and the Department of Antiquities undertook their excavation. They were five tombs of a cemetery of the late pre-Greek period; one of them was older, of the middle pre-Greek period. Local pottery was found, large kraters decorated with animals, cylinder seals, one of which shows a banquet scene, and Mycenaean vessels, which show contacts with the Greek world of the Aegean.³

In 1972 the Cypriot archaeologist Kyriakos Nicolaou excavated, on behalf of the Department of Antiquities, a cemetery of the same late pre-Greek period at the locality Vounos of Angastina. Some of its vessels resemble vessels from Egkomi so closely that later research considers it likely that they came from the same workshops.⁴

The Schedule of Ancient Monuments of the Department of Antiquities also lists the site of an ancient settlement on the village’s land, which extends to the remains of a medieval bridge at the locality Kamares.⁵

Frankish rule

Angastina was not the fief of a noble; together with neighbouring Mora, it belonged to the military order of the Knights Templar. When Pope Clement V dissolved the order, his letters ordering that the property of the Templars be given to the Knights of Saint John, the Hospitallers, were read in the metropolitan church of Lefkosia on 7 November 1313. Among the estates that then passed to the Hospitallers, Bustron records “the villages of Mora and Angastina in the region of the Mesaoria”. This is the first known written record of the village.⁶

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, 42 property-holding households, Christian and Muslim, are recorded in Angastina. Most of the land lay fallow, that is, fields left to rest; there were also cotton fields, a few gardens with fruit trees and only 17 olive trees. The households had more than 550 sheep, 16 pairs of oxen, 20 cows and calves, and a few beehives.⁷

British rule

During British rule the Lefkosia–Ammochostos railway, which operated from 1905 to 1951, passed beside the village, and Angastina had its own railway station; in the 1931 census the station is recorded together with the village. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the station building served as a police station until 1974, and at that point the new Lefkosia–Ammochostos road follows the old railway line.⁸

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village, at the eastern edge of the old settlement, is dedicated to Agia Paraskevi and dates from the 18th or 19th century.⁹

At the southern edge of the village, in the middle of the cemetery, stands the church of Agios Therapon, of 1796, which is an Ancient Monument. Jeffery noted it as a chapel that looked like an old building, in contrast to the newer village church.¹⁰ On the land of Angastina there was also the chapel of Agios Georgios tou Sporou.

Economy and society

Angastina had extensive, waterless land. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, as early as 1885 the Cypriot scholar Evryviadis Frangoudis wrote that the village produced cereals and cotton, as in the 1832/33 survey. Before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly wheat and barley, without irrigation, and kept sheep and goats: in 1973 the village had almost 2,500 sheep and goats and 8,670 poultry. Many inhabitants worked in Lefkosia and Ammochostos.¹¹ The Angastina Co-operative Credit Society was founded in 1926 and the Angastina Farmers’ Co-operative Society in 1934.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, as early as 1887 the Cypriot scholar Periklis Michailidis reported that Angastina had a school, at a time when few villages of the Mesaoria had one.¹² According to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, the school was built in the courtyard of the church of Agia Paraskevi.¹³ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Angastina had 89 pupils and 3 teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 513 inhabitants in 1881, 510 in 1891, 560 in 1901, 680 in 1911 and 661 in 1921.¹⁴ In 1931 Angastina, together with the railway station, had 672 inhabitants, 671 Christians and one Muslim, and in 1946 805, of whom 804 were Orthodox and one of another religion (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 778 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 807 Greeks. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the last years before 1974 the population was growing more because of the village’s position between Lefkosia and Ammochostos than because of farming.¹⁵

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 420 inhabitants of Angastina signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 47 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Angastina was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing.¹⁶ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

In Angastina and its area 9 people killed in 1974 are recorded, 8 civilians and 1 soldier. 12 inhabitants of the village, 10 civilians and 2 soldiers, have been missing since 1974. Seven were lost in the village and its area and five elsewhere: at the Pavlides garage in Lefkosia (2), in Askeia (Assia), in Afaneia and in the Mia Milia–Kythrea area. The remains of six have been located and identified; the other six are still missing. Two more inhabitants of the village, both civilians, were killed elsewhere, in the Pallouriotissa area and in the Marathovounos area.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agia Paraskevi into a mosque; the crosses and bells were removed.¹⁷ The church of Agios Therapon was looted and desecrated, and the cemetery around it has fallen into ruin. According to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, the chapel of Agios Georgios was demolished after the invasion.¹⁸