Spathariko is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos (Famagusta). It lies 14 kilometres north-west of Ammochostos, at an altitude of 10 metres, at the north-eastern edge of the Mesaoria, next to Arnadi. Its land reached east to the sea of Famagusta Bay and included part of the Ampelia state forest.¹ At the 1960 census it had 471 inhabitants, all Greeks.

Name

The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes that in the Middle Ages the village was known as “Spadarico”.²

Founding and first records

On the village land the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) marks the sites of Paradeisi and Paradeisiotissa.³ According to Jeffery, the ruins around the chapel of Paradeisiotissa may mark the site of the medieval estate of Paradisi.⁴

Archaeological sites

The British archaeologist David Hogarth, who passed through Spathariko in 1888, saw many rock-cut tombs of the Roman period there. The villagers told him that gold ornaments and glass had been found in them.⁵

Frankish rule, Venetian rule

According to Jeffery, in the Middle Ages Spathariko was an important settlement of Armenians.⁶ The 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie writes that the Armenian farmers of Cyprus had settled mainly in the upper Mesaoria and in the Keryneia mountains, and that under Venetian rule Spathariko, Platanissos and Kornokipos were still Armenian villages; in his own day they were Greek or Turkish.⁷ In 1888 Hogarth describes it as a village that had once been Armenian.⁸

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Spathariko is a mixed village, with 16 property-holding households and a church. They had a few cotton fields, fields of black-eyed peas and of madder, the plant from which red dye was made, gardens with water-wheels for irrigation and large barren tracts. The only trees recorded are twelve mulberries. They had 520 sheep, oxen for ploughing, cows, two mules and beehives.⁹

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village is dedicated to the Apostle Luke; it stands in the northern part of the old settlement and dates from the 17th–18th century.¹⁰ It is an Ancient Monument. The village also has the 18th-century chapel of Agios Georgios.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and some vegetables, and many of them worked in Ammochostos.¹¹ According to the 2019 government publication on the displaced municipalities and communities, in the centre of the village there was a windmill that drew water from the village well.¹² The Spathariko Cooperative Credit Society was founded in 1956 and the Spathariko Cooperative Grocery in 1959.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Spathariko had 93 pupils and three teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Spathariko had 124 inhabitants in 1881, 151 in 1891, 170 in 1901, 172 in 1911 and 229 in 1921.¹³ In 1931 it had 281 inhabitants, 263 Christians and 18 Muslims, and in 1946 390, of whom 364 were Orthodox, 25 Muslims and one of another religion (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 471 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 566 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 215 inhabitants of Spathariko signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters records 78 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Spathariko was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. In its application to the European Commission of Human Rights the Republic of Cyprus stated that about nine Greeks were being detained at Spathariko, and that the last inhabitants of Spathariko and Agios Georgios were among the 778 people expelled from the occupied areas at the end of June 1975.¹⁴ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Four dead of 1974 are recorded in the village itself, all civilians. One more civilian from Spathariko was killed at Arnadi.

According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the occupation authorities illegally converted the church of the Apostle Luke into a mosque. When a new mosque was built in the village, between 2008 and 2012, the church was abandoned. Its crosses and bells have been removed, as have all its furnishings, and the cemetery around it is in ruins.¹⁵