Potamos tou Kampou is an occupied quarter of Karavostasi, in the district of Lefkosia. It lies 18 kilometres west of Morfou, at an elevation of 50 metres, on the shore of Morfou Bay, where the Kampos river flows into the sea. It was a new settlement of the 20th century, which grew with the mines of the area. In the 1960 census it had 461 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Potamos tou Kampou (“river of Kampos”) was a place-name of the area before it was given to the settlement, because here the river that starts from the village of Kampos, in the mountains of Kykkos, flows into the sea.¹ The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) does indeed record the river under the name Kampos, from the land of the village of the same name, through the land of Galini, to its mouth on the land of Karavostasi, and Potamos tou Kampou as a quarter of Karavostasi.²

Founding and first records

Potamos tou Kampou is a new settlement. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it was founded after 1920 by inhabitants of Galini and other villages of the area who worked in the mines and in the mining installations of Xeros and Karavostasi. The houses were built in a row, along the Karavostasi–Pyrgos road.³ The new settlement is not recorded separately in either the 1931 or the 1946 census.

Archaeological sites

Potamos tou Kampou lies a little more than one kilometre from the ruins of ancient Soloi, one of the Greek city-kingdoms of Cyprus, and in antiquity its land belonged to their kingdom. At the locality Agios Kournoutas, where the village church of the same name also stood, the Department of Antiquities carried out rescue excavations of tombs of the necropolis. In 1965 it investigated a rock-cut tomb, partly looted, with a long passage and fourteen chambers, six on each side and two at the end. In 1967 levelling works revealed four tombs, from the Classical Greek to the Roman period. Among the finds were a figurine of a woman wearing a himation and gold earrings with lions’ heads, and clay figurines of the Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period: an actor of tragedy, a woman of the Tanagra type, that is, of the elegant female figurines that were widespread throughout the Greek world, and a Silenus, that is, the old companion of Dionysus, riding a donkey. The Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis recorded them in the annual chronicles of excavations in Cyprus.⁴

In 1969, at the south-western edge of the village, on the land of Galini, levelling works brought to light three partly looted tombs of the Archaic ancient Greek period. Near them a rock-cut chamber was found with neatly arranged household vessels, lamps with many nozzles, ash and charred seeds, which was most probably a rural sanctuary.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of the village was dedicated to the Apostle Andrew. The Gazetteer records, in the area of the settlement, the churches of the Apostle Andrew and of Agios Kournoutas.⁶ The 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus also records the churches of Agios Konstantinos, Agia Varvara and Agios Charalambos.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Potamos tou Kampou was essentially a mining settlement. The neighbouring mines of Mavrovouni, Skouriotissa and Apliki, the installations at Xeros and the port of Karavostasi gave work to many of its inhabitants. The ore came by rail to the processing installations at Xeros and was loaded onto ships from the port of Karavostasi. On the village’s land mainly citrus was grown, lemons, oranges and citrons, and a few pear, peach, plum and almond trees. In 1966 the citrus groves covered 65.5 hectares.⁷

Population

Potamos tou Kampou appears as a separate community for the first time in the 1960 census, with 461 inhabitants, all of them Greeks. By 1973 its population had more than doubled, to 1,010 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 120 pupils and 4 teachers.

National struggles

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 30 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Potamos tou Kampou was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek inhabitants suffered ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return.

Five inhabitants of the village, two civilians and three soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of one have been identified; the other four are still missing. The places where they went missing are recorded as the Lefka prisons (two), the Petromouthkia area of Saint Hilarion (two) and the Kotziakagia area of the Pentadaktylos (one). On the village’s land, on the Lefkosia–Kampos road, three civilians were killed.

The 2009 list records that the churches of the Apostle Andrew and of Agios Kournoutas were demolished by the Turkish army, and that the churches of Agia Varvara and Agios Charalambos were desecrated and looted.