Maksim P.
The coastal cannon story caught my attention: a mahogany corvette built in England for Catherine the Great was wrecked before reaching St. Petersburg, and its eight guns ended up at Voka Manor. The Duchess of Kingston, Elizabeth, had bought the Vokka, Toila and Oru estates in 1781 for 85,000 rubles. She also founded a vodka distillery and apothecary, and local legend says she wanted to build a town here. Voka was counted among Estonia’s seven most beautiful manor houses in 1787. Pearl fishing in Pühajõgi was common during her time, too. There’s a long history behind the place. The earliest record dates to 1426, when Kirivere, later called Voka, was among villages transferred from Kärkna Monastery to the Narva bailiff of the German Order. The estate appears in records as Kollota in 1586. Narva burgomaster Johann Fock bought it in 1626, and its German name, Fockenhof, is the source of Voka. A post station opened here in 1712 on the St. Petersburg-Tartu-Riga road, first in the Voka tavern. A wooden station followed between 1715 and 1719, then a stone one in 1848. War and plague hit hard: the road and coast were plundered at the start of the Northern War, and the 1710 plague sped up population decline. By 1726 the population had grown again, largely with newcomers, and Kiriwere had 43 residents. The Duchess was born in 1720 to Scottish nobleman Thomas Chudleigh. She became a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales, daughter-in-law of George II, and was said to be a leading fashionista. She died in France in 1788. The estate and parish took her maiden name, Chudleigh, which stayed in use until 1917. Peter von Wilcken built the manor’s stone structures. Research suggests the cannon bastions date to Elizabeth’s rule. The main manor was built in the early 19th century and was considered the area’s finest for its exterior and interior. Its Classicist design was open to view from all four sides, with artillery carriages on artificial bastions in front. The building was destroyed in 1944 during the war. Nikolai von Wilcken continued developing the estate, whose main income came from vodka production. By the late 19th century it also had a brickworks, water mill run by Magnus Adorf, dairy run by Anetta Viloter, anglerfish cattle breeding, duck and chicken farming, gardening, a nursery, fishing and forestry. Emperor Nicholas and his wife Charlotte stopped in Vok on June 17, 1817, while traveling from Prussia to St. Petersburg. Letters commemorating the CNW event hang on a stone by the shore below the estate. Eduard Gustav Baron von Toll, who courted von Wilcken’s daughter, stayed here between expeditions. After he died searching for the legendary Sannikov Land, his family lived here.
