Saustila is one of the oldest country estates in Finland. The first preserved mentions on documents date back to 1405, when the royal circuit court ordered that one hamlet of Saustila was to be returned to the crown. The verdict was not carried out in practice and Rocker Ingesson and his offspring continued as masters of Saustila.
During the period of Great Hate, many landowners donated their lands to monasteries in order to avoid the destruction of their estate. Thus did also the protector Sven Sture, who donated Saustila in 1490 to the monastery of Naantali as a building to maintain the service of God
After the Reformation, the King Kustaa Vaasa acquired the lands, which his father’s uncle Sven Sture had once owned. From 1531 to 1556, Saustila was at the use of the crown’s leaseholders. In 1556, the King Gustav performed an exchange in which Nils Mickelsson, the grandson of the Blåfield-family’s progenitor Benkt Jönnsson, became the master of the estate. However, Mickelsson died before the year 1562 and his widow, Ingeborg Broke, re-married with Olof Swart. Saustila’s new master Swart was a remarkable man. He served in the king’s court, for example as a butler for Erik XIV. Under Swart, Saustila was a crown’s cavalry estate, and for this service, the manor was exempt from taxes.
After some changes in ownership, Saustila passed to Kaarle XII’s bodyguard, Major Anders Lindblom, in 1703. He had to leave Saustila, however, due to his ending up in Turkey after the battle of Pultava. The estate was left uninhabited, since the lady of the manor had to flee because the Russians were spreading destruction in the parish of Sauvo.
Lindblom was forced to sell the ramshackle Saustila in the year 1723 to Lars Johan Ehrenmalm, Justice Court of Appeal. This deal was a real stroke of luck for Saustila, because Ehrenmalm made significant changes, which made the farm a prospering model estate. Its example was followed widely across Sweden-Finland. L. J. Ehrenmalm was one of the most famous profit thinkers of his time. He performed bald and broad-minded experiments in Saustila. Ehrenmalm astonished his contemporaries with his flowerbeds, spice plantations and beehives, for instance. He grew vegetables also in a greenhouse, in addition to outdoors. In the greenhouse, he experimented how exotic species adapt to the conditions in Finland. He also made Saustila a known garden estate, to which he founded two gardens. One got to grow “wild” and the other was a French-type garden with its lanes and arbours.
Apple, cherry and pear trees bore fruit in the manor’s garden. Saustila’s pears were widely known for their juiciness and sweetness. Ehrenmalm eagerly grew potato, flax and tobacco, too. He also had the manor’s two fish ponds dug out. Something about L. J. Ehrenmalm’s reputation as a skilled farmer and a government official can be seen in his letter to the parliament, which aroused great attention. In it, he gives instructions, among other things, on improvement and promotion of farming and the management of Finland’s issues.
During the era of the Ehrenmalms, a new manor house was built to replace the buildings built in the 17th century and damaged during the Great Hate. The new main building, built in 1740, had a hall, five chambers, a large kitchen and two arched cellars. The furnishing of the rooms was of a high standard. The roof of the house was made out of birch bark and peat. The whole building was brushed with red colour and tar. However, the house was destroyed in a fire in 1796. Captain Otto Reinhold Fock also followed eagerly in Ehrenmalm’s footsteps. He got Saustila in connection with a marriage in 1806. He kept on developing the garden and the park and had the present empire-style main building built in 1819. C. L. Engel probably drew the main building. The building lies on ancient cellars from the 15th century.
At that time, Saustila was famous for not only as a forerunner in agriculture but also for its healing water. This oxygenic, fresh groundwater was drunk for its healing qualities. Also, the civilization demanded that “bad dregs are to be rinsed out of the body”. For this purpose, the parishioners went for a dip in Saustila’s “Happo-spring”. The effect of water can be experienced even today!
Saustila’s owner changed several times during the 1800s until the estate was taken over by Major Gustav Schauman in 1909. Schauman brought the manor back among the model estates by making numerous reforms. He revived the Ehrenmalm-era’s traditions by intensifying and developing the estate’s farming and creating new possibilities for agriculture with his different kinds of test plantations. During Schauman’s time, the number one product of the farm was caraway.
The exterior of the manor house had remained in nearly the same state as before. A new veranda and a balcony were built in front of the main entrance in 1907. In the 1920s, Schauman renewed the furnishings in accordance with the plans of Turku’s city architect Bertel Jung. The father of the bride donated valuable rosewood to the manor. The wood was used to make the floor and the staircase of the hall. The rosewood staircase with its wainscot is still as good as new, and while looking at that we can admire the high standard design and handicraft skills of past times. Connected with the reforms, imposing Art Nouveau stoves were bricked in the hall and the dining room. Elsewhere, the manor’s original tiled stoves, made by Fortuna-factory in Nauvo, remained. The park and garden of the estate were improved to fit the spirit of the times.
In 1937, Claes Aminoff, baron of Kankainen, purchased Saustila. After the wars, the landowners had to cede a certain amount of their lands to the refugees from Karelia. Because baron Aminoff himself lived in Kankainen of Masku, he let his shares of Saustila be divided twice in order to avoid the cleaving of his home estate.
After nearly fifty years of being empty, Saustila manor was bought by Markku Näsänen in 1985.
Saustila Manor with its surroundings is an important part of our magnificent cultural heritage. The manor house represents our valuable building history and a lot of precious traditional landscape has remained within the area. The latest leaf in the history of the manor is about to turn in the beginning of the 21st century now that the present owner of Saustila has decided to bring the Saustila Manor back to its place as a model estate of our country and a fragment of vivid cultural history.
