Gerolakkos is a large Greek community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 10 kilometres west of Lefkosia, 170 metres above sea level. Its land, among low hills, reached the Ovgos river to the north, and to the south included a large part of Lefkosia airport.¹ In the 1960 census it had 1,868 inhabitants, 1,863 of them Greeks.

Name

In the 1460s the name is written “Gerolacco”, in 1815 “Ierolakos” and on the British Kitchener map “Yerolakko”.²

Founding and first records

Gerolakkos first appears in a written source in the 1460s, as “Gerolacco”, in the list of the fiefs of King James II preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron. In a Venetian list of royal villages of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, an “Ierolaio” is recorded together with neighbouring Palaiometocho (“Paglionietocho”) and two more settlements; according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia this is Gerolakkos.³

The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes that Gerolakkos had the character of a medieval settlement. A large cistern under a Gothic arch was perhaps, in his view, the centre of a medieval estate around which the village later grew.⁴

The official gazetteer of Cyprus marks on the village’s land the settlement of Prastion, at its north-western edge, and, at the same spot, Agia Fotou as an ancient monument.⁵

Antiquity

The Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios, who travelled in Cyprus in the 19th century, noted in 1890 that there were many ancient tombs on the hills of Gerolakkos and neighbouring Mammari.⁶ No excavation of them is recorded, and it is not known to which period they belong.

Frankish and Venetian rule

In the years 1464–1468 King James II gave Gerolakkos as a fief, together with Margi, to Gioan Viludo, as Bustron records.⁷ If the “Ierolaio” of the Venetian list is Gerolakkos, as the Encyclopaedia says, at the end of the 15th century, in the first years of Venetian rule, the village was royal, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord.⁸

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Gerolakkos belonged to the administrative district of Oreini and had 27 property-holding households, Christian and Muslim. They had fields, vineyards with four wine presses for the must, threshing floors, water and a few olive trees. The largest part of their property was their animals: more than 900 goats and sheep and 17 oxen for ploughing.⁹

In October 1815 the English traveller William Turner passed through the area, on the road from Lefkosia to Morfou Bay, and recorded “Ierolakos” first among the villages he saw that day.¹⁰ According to the Cypriot historian Loizos Philippou, cited by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the church of Gerolakkos was among those repaired by Archbishop Chrysanthos in 1793.¹¹

British rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, a police station operated in the village from 1905.¹² In 1916 the old cemetery, which most probably lay around the church of Agios Mamas, was closed for health reasons, and a new one was opened half a kilometre to the east. Its iron gate bears the date 1922.¹³

Churches and monasteries

Gerolakkos had two parish churches. The older, Agios Mamas, at the northern edge of the old village centre, is small and vaulted and dates from the 17th–18th century. It is an Ancient Monument. According to Jeffery, it was partly rebuilt in 1821, as its iconostasis recorded. On the iconostasis was an old icon of the Panagia Gorgoypakousa, and in the middle of the church an almost effaced tombstone with a figure in relief with joined hands, in the style of the 16th century. A water spout on the west front has the form of an animal with three heads, from which three jets of water ran, the work of some village craftsman.¹⁴

The second parish church, the Panagia Evangelistria, at the southern edge of the old centre, is of the 20th century. Its building began in 1918, stopped two years later, and was completed between 1954 and 1959.¹⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and kept goats and sheep. Quarries formerly operated in the area, and the “stone of Gerolakkos” was well known in building. Later, mushroom growing developed in the caves left by the quarries, and continued until 1974.¹⁶ In 1943 the New Cooperative Credit Society of Gerolakkos was founded, and in 1953 the Gerolakkos Cooperative Grocery.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Gerolakkos had 287 pupils and nine teachers.

Population

The population of Gerolakkos grew quickly in the last decades before the invasion. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 447 inhabitants in 1881, 457 in 1891, 585 in 1901, 724 in 1911 and 822 in 1921.¹⁷ In 1946 it had 1,384 inhabitants, of whom 1,347 were Orthodox and 36 Muslims (the 1946 census recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,868 inhabitants, 1,863 Greeks and two Turks, and in 1973 2,459 Greeks and no Turks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 816 inhabitants of Gerolakkos signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 50 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1974 the village was bombed by the Turkish air force and suffered extensive destruction.¹⁸ During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Gerolakkos was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

One civilian inhabitant of Gerolakkos, who was arrested in the village, was recorded as missing; his remains have been identified. Three more inhabitants of Gerolakkos, one civilian and two soldiers, were killed elsewhere, in the areas of Fyllia and Karavas; for one no place is given. On the land of Gerolakkos 24 dead of 1974 are recorded, 18 soldiers and six civilians. Most fell in the area of Lefkosia airport and the others in the area of the village; some were mortally wounded there and died in Lefkosia General Hospital.

The occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of the Panagia Evangelistria into a mosque and the church of Agios Mamas into a cultural centre.¹⁹ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the old icons of Agios Mamas were lost after the invasion.²⁰