Kalo Chorio is a mixed community in the occupied part of the district of Lefkosia. It lies 14 kilometres south-west of Morfou, 120 metres above sea level, in the geographical region of Solia. It is built on the left side of the valley of the Kargotis river, a few kilometres east of Lefka.¹ In the 1960 census it had 531 inhabitants, 224 of them Greeks and 307 Turks.

Name

To distinguish it from the other villages of Cyprus with the same name, it was called Kalo Chorio Lefkas, after neighbouring Lefka, or Kalo Chorio Soleas.²

Archaeological sites

A little east of the village, at the locality of Chalandrikas, on the boundaries with the neighbouring communities of Petra and Agios Georgios Lefkas, lies a pre-Greek settlement that archaeologists have named after Kalo Chorio. In 1973 and 1974 it was being excavated by an American expedition of Kent State University, under James R. Carpenter. The excavation was in progress in the spring of 1974 and was interrupted that summer by the Turkish invasion. Where the finds are today is not known.³

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Kalo Chorio is recorded as a village with a mixed population and 15 property-holding households. The holdings were mainly wheat fields, and also cotton fields, small gardens with mulberries, threshing floors and running water, with 86 trees, mostly olives and carobs. There was an olive mill in the village, and the inhabitants had around 880 sheep and six pairs of oxen.⁴

British rule

In the early 20th century the village acquired a station of the Cyprus railway. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in 1918, mentions the Kalo Chorio station on the new line to the valley of Solia, and from there the road to Lefka.⁵ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the railway reached Kalo Chorio in 1914 and the station operated from November of that year until 1932.

According to the same encyclopaedia, the neighbouring copper and iron pyrite mines of Skouriotissa, Mavrovouni and Apliki gave work to most of the inhabitants, and some worked at the mining installations of Xeros. Thanks to these, the village’s population grew quickly in the first decades of the century.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The village’s Greek Orthodox church, the parish church, is dedicated to Saint Modestos. It stands at the south-eastern edge of the old settlement, and just east of it is the cemetery.⁷

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus, fruit trees, vegetables, olives and cereals, and in 1973 they kept almost a thousand sheep and goats.⁸ In 1961 the Greek Cooperative Credit Society of Kalo Chorio was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 174 inhabitants in 1891, 192 in 1901, 183 in 1911 and 309 in 1921.⁹ In 1931 the village had 552 inhabitants, 321 Christians and 231 Muslims, and in 1946 544, of whom 250 were Orthodox, 288 Muslims and 6 of other religions (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 531 inhabitants, 224 Greeks and 307 Turks, and in 1973 192 Greeks and around 450 Turks (an estimate). In the school year 1973–74 the village’s Greek primary school had 20 pupils and one teacher.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 169 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 17 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Kalo Chorio was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed: all the Greek inhabitants fled before the advancing army.¹⁰ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return.

Four inhabitants of Kalo Chorio, all soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of three have been identified, while the fourth is still missing. All four vanished at Lapithos and in its area, two of them in the Lapithos–Karavas area. One more soldier from Kalo Chorio was killed elsewhere, in the area of Limnitis.

The church of Agios Modestos has been desecrated. Together with the cemetery, it now lies inside a Turkish military camp, in a forbidden military zone, and no one can visit it.¹¹