Ushomyr is a village on the banks of the Uzh River in Korosten Raion, 20 km from Korosten. Fewer than a thousand people live here, but once it was a bustling town with a Catholic church, a monastery, a synagogue, and factories. Today, people come here for peace and quiet: to the old park with centuries-old oaks, the banks of the Uzh, and a small zoo.
Chronicle Ushesk
The name comes from the Uzh River, which in ancient times was called Usha. Linguists believe this is an ancient Baltic name: before the arrival of the Slavs, Baltic tribes lived on the banks of the Pripyat and further south, and the Lithuanian word for ash tree is "uosis". The settlement of Ushesk, or Ushsk, is mentioned in chronicles under the years 1150 and 1151.
The name Ushomyr appears in documents from the mid-17th century; the village is marked on Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan's map of 1648. In 1683–1684, the Cossacks of Semen Palii and Zakhar Iskra seized the Nemyrych estate and stayed here for almost 16 years.
Carmelite Town
In 1767, at the expense of the noble Dubrawski family, the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and a wooden Carmelite monastery were built in Ushomyr. Antonina Dubrawska, née Bohusz, endowed the church with 18,000 zlotys, Anna-Dominika Dubrawska gave another 12,000, and her brother Józef gave 10,000. The Ushomyr parish encompassed over a hundred villages, with chapels standing in Bilka, Pysky, Zlobychi, and other villages. The church operated until the 1940s.
In 1775, at the expense of the landowner Dubrawska, a wooden Orthodox Church of Saints Peter and Paul with a bell tower was also built. In the 18th century, leather and brewing factories, stone quarries, an iron mine, distilleries, and a water mill operated in the town, and in the late 19th century — tar works, breweries, and glass and brick factories. In 1897, over 2,300 people lived in Ushomyr, the majority of them Jews.
In 1915, 5 km from the village, the Ushomyr railway station was built on the Korosten — Zhytomyr line. In 1941, during the Nazi occupation, SS men killed almost all the Jewish men of the town.
Park and Zoo
The Ushomyr Park was founded in the first half of the 19th century on the basis of an old oak plantation that was already about 150 years old at the time. Once it was an architecturally designed park with a system of ponds. Today it is a landscape art landmark with an area of about 13 hectares: 22 species of trees and 12 species of shrubs aged 160–190 grow here.
In 1932, an orphanage for children was opened on the grounds of the landowner's estate in the park, and later a sanatorium boarding school, where children from the northern districts of the oblast studied after the Chornobyl disaster. Ushomyr also has a small zoo open to visitors: mostly tame animals live here — deer, a wild boar, horses, and various birds.
How to Get There
It is about 20 km from Korosten to Ushomyr. Ushomyr railway station is located 5 km from the village on the Korosten — Zhytomyr line. The trip can be conveniently combined with Korosten and the Uzh River and abandoned hydroelectric power plants of the Korosten region. More about the surroundings can be found in the article about Korosten district.
