Kontea is a large Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 20 kilometres west of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 50 metres, in the Mesaoria plain. On its land, south of the village, stands the chapel of Agios Mamas, which is an Ancient Monument. In the 1960 census it had 1,305 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, the name most probably comes from the word “βικοντέα” (vikontea), from the French vicomte (viscount), that is, the residence of a nobleman, as, according to Menardos, the ruins of buildings and the old trees of the place bore witness.¹ In the 1931 census and in Jeffery the village is written “Kondea”.

Founding and first records

Kontea has not been found in the lists of villages and fiefs of Frankish and Venetian rule. The first written record found is the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33, where the settlement is recorded not under the name Kontea but as “the gardens of Lysi”.²

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village grew up in the years of Turkish rule around a large estate, the manor of Kontea. The workers of the estate gradually bought pieces of land, and so the estate grew smaller; part of it passed to the Church and part to the inhabitants.³ The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, notes that at Kontea foundations of old buildings survived and that many antiquities had been found in the area.⁴

A little west of the village the official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) records the place-name “Palion Prastion”, that is, “old settlement”, which shows that there was most probably earlier habitation there. A little further south-west, on the land of Lysi, lay the medieval settlement of Aglassyka, which in the 1460s the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron records as a fief (“Aglassica”).⁵

Turkish rule

In the survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, 20 property-holding households are recorded, all Christian except one. Among the owners is also the village priest. Most of the land was fallow, that is, fields left to rest; there were also cotton fields, gardens, threshing floors, a small olive grove with 24 olive trees and a water installation. The households had 170 sheep, 13 pairs of oxen, a few cows and 24 beehives.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, at the south-western edge of the old settlement, is dedicated to Saint Charalambos and dates from the 19th or 20th century. A church stood on the same site as early as the 16th century; the present one was consecrated in 1876 by Archbishop Sofronios. The cemetery lies about 500 metres north-west of the church, among the fields.⁷

About three kilometres south of the village stands the chapel of Agios Mamas, which is an Ancient Monument. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, there was also a chapel of Agios Georgios on the land of Kontea.⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Kontea had little rain, but boreholes irrigated large areas around the village, and in 1966 two small dams were built in the area to recharge the groundwater. Before 1974 the inhabitants grew citrus fruit, vegetables, vines, pulses, cereals, fodder crops, olives and pistachio trees, and east of the village there was an agricultural station. Stock-breeding was well developed: in 1973 the village had more than 3,200 sheep, almost 800 goats and almost 13,000 poultry. According to the same encyclopaedia, the position of the village beside the old Lefkosia–Ammochostos road and its fertile land helped its population to grow quickly.⁹

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites the Cypriot scholar Ieronymos Peristianis, the first known teacher of Kontea was the priest Papa-Charalambos, who was born around 1800 and taught the “common letters” until his death in 1879. The school year began in November or December and ended with the harvest, so that the children could help their parents in the fields. He was succeeded in 1880 by Papa-Konstantinos and later by the schoolteacher Georgios Tyrimos, a graduate of the Scholarchio (secondary school) of Larnaca. According to the same encyclopaedia, from 1823 the Lapierre family, who lived in the manor of Kontea, had Pambos Filalithis from Larnaca as a private tutor for their children.¹⁰ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Kontea had 159 pupils and five teachers.

Population

Kontea grew steadily in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Kontea had 403 inhabitants in 1881, 501 in 1891, 561 in 1901, 664 in 1911 and 729 in 1921.¹¹ In 1931 it had 857 inhabitants, 843 Christians and 14 Muslims, and in 1946 1,227, of whom 1,208 were Orthodox, 13 Muslims and 6 of another religion (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,305 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 1,359 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 656 inhabitants of Kontea signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 21 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

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

Three inhabitants of Kontea, two civilians and one soldier, were recorded as missing. One civilian went missing in the village, and his remains have been located and identified. The other civilian went missing in Ammochostos and the soldier at Voni; both are still missing. Three more inhabitants of the village, all soldiers, were killed in fighting outside it: at Karavas (Pente Mili), in the area of Agios Kassianos in Lefkosia and in the area of Athalassa.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Charalambos into a cultural centre. From 2006 the church was repaired through a bicommunal initiative, and by 2022 it again had an iconostasis and icons. In the cemetery many crosses are damaged, and the site is overgrown with wild vegetation.¹²