Woodpecker, spare that spire

Romania's wooden churches survived Ceausescu only to face new threats. Helena Drysdale reports

An ancient wooden church punctures the mist in Maramures, northern Romania; its wooden spire pierces the sky. Here, there are no lorries, no machines, no burglar alarms; in fact, none of the everyday roar of rural Romania. There is only the sound of a woodpecker. The woodpecker, however, is no friend to the church; it is eating it away as surely as any form of modern pollution might do.

The fate of the wooden churches of Maramures is one of Europe's most challenging, yet obscure, conservation problems. Maramures is an isolated and lovely pocket of hilly land along the Romania-Ukraine border. Surrounded by forests patrolled by wolves andbears, here, more than anywhere else in Europe (and despite everything Ceausescu did to destroy village life in Romania), medieval rural tradition persists.

People wear national dress as a matter of course, not to greet tourists (of whom there are very few). They practise time-honoured crafts such as decorative wood carving and adorn timber buildings in a style that has developed unself-consciously over hundreds of years.

Local carpentry skills, however, reached their zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries, when wooden churches reached their peak in terms of architecture, design and craftsmanship. Inspired by the great masonry buildings of the Transylvanian cities to the south of Maramures, these are late Gothic and baroque designs re-created in local materials: pine and oak. Some 200 survive. Often perched on hills and surrounded by graveyards and entered through swaggering carved gateways, many have double roofs resembling swirling, frilled skirts. Others are dwarfed by soaring spires. Surdesti's reaches an audacious 177ft, one of Europe's tallest wooden structures.

The basic building technique of these fanciful buildings is called blockwork, whereby one log is laid horizontally on top of another, as with log cabins. Blockwork dates from the latter part of the Stone Age and was the dominant form of building construction from the Balkans to the Arctic. Even now, many of the peasant inhabitants of Maramures are capable of building their own houses from scratch.

Churches in Maramures are distinguished by their elaborate double roofs, each clad in beautifully carved shingles, like a coat of leaves. Outside, walls are decorated with carved rope patterns, while monumental gateways are decorated with religious scenes and the Tree of Life. Inside, walls are covered in murals. At Botiza, a marvellous Grim Reaper wields his scythe over the congregation as they pass through the west door; at Poienile Izei, devils inflict tortures on sinners in a way that makes Pulp Fiction appear suitable for infants.

Unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, Romania's churches remained open throughout 45 years of hard-line Communist rule. Even so, many old buildings were left to decay. After Ceausescu disbanded the Commission for Historic Monuments, for opposing his plans to destroy central Bucharest in the late Seventies, conservationists were forced to seek new employment or, if possible, to leave the country. In Maramures, local committees patched up churches where possible, but sometimes their attempts did more harm than good, particularly when they replaced wooden shingles with sheet metal, or laid concrete walls around churches threatening to collapse; this only destroyed the ancient woodwork behind the concrete.

In the five years since Ceaucescu was executed, there has been a surge of religious fervour, though, ironically, this has caused further damage to the fabric of wooden churches. Now churches are packed, congregations rubbing against venerable murals and banging nails into beams from which to hang their heavy coats. Smoke from hundreds of candles has blackened precious icons.

More than this, there has been a population explosion in Maramures. Much of this fertile land escaped Ceaucescu's crazy collectivisation programme, so the local economy has survived. Families who have made a bit of money over the past five years have been heading this way and building second homes. They, too, go to church. As a result of overcrowding, Maramures is becoming littered with cheap, concrete churches. The daft thing is that once these giant concrete churches are built, local people desert theold churches, leaving them to rot.

And to woodpeckers. Ornitholigists have yet to discover why woodpeckers are so especially attracted to old churches. The timbers may be producing a tastier breed of termite, or they may be better drumming boards for the woodpecker's mating call than trees. Whatever the reason, the birds leave large holes that are then enlarged by crows.

Further culprits include subsidence, damp, woodworm, rot and rain. As many of the churches have few or no foundations, they suffer from structural instability. The reason for having no foundations was not only because timber constructions are light, but because villagers would remove their church to a safer location during times of strife.

Brian Tanner, a south London business consultant with a passion for Romanian churches, has set up a project to restore seven of these churches to their former glory, not as museums, but as regular places of worship. His main task is to raise funds, some £200,000. The Foreign Office has agreed to help, along with the Romanian Ministry of Culture, the EU, Unesco and private charities. The Romanian Forestry Commission, Romsilva, has promised a supply of seasoned timber.

"Romanians have never, in living memory, had to think for themselves and take local initiative. They have always looked to the top for action," says Mr Tanner. "If we succeed, we will have solved a problem for the Romanians themselves to solve in another300 years."

Woodpeckers willing.