Baggböle Manor

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Baggböle Manor is a manor house, located on the Ume River in Baggböle, about northwest of the city of Umeå in northern Sweden. It was completed in 1846 as the residence for the manager of Baggböle Sawmill.HistoryThe large house was completed in 1846 as the residence for the manager of Baggböle Sawmill. The architectural plans for the building were created by the minister of Umeå parish, Johan Anders Linder, who along with being a writer and minister was often hired as architect and builder in and around Umeå. He designed in the Empire style. Linder records that he was awarded 50 Swedish crowns for his design work at the opening ceremony of the building in 1847, by James Robertson Dickson, representing the Gothenburg firm of James Dickson & Co that had acquired the sawmill in 1840. Dickson would spend time in court twice accused of what has since been called "baggböleri" in Sweden, i.e. illegal felling of timber in forests belonging to the Crown.The architectureThe mansion was built of timber covered with planed wood panels, and was painted with a white linseed oil-based paint to make it resemble a contemporary stone house. With 500sqm of floor space on two floors it was one of the area's largest homes. Both the front and the rear of the building has a neoclassical facade decorated with Doric pilasters, and both the inside and the outside of the mansion is still very well preserved. Very little is, however, preserved of the two wings of the mansion, the garden, and the various other buildings that originally belonged to the mansion, buildings that included a school, a stable, two gazebos and a skittle alley.