The lot of the house No. 95 is located in a compact housing development encircling the large village green in Nová Lhota. These homesteads were measured at the village foundation, in the mid-16th century. Their gradual division, especially in the 17th and at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, gave rise to a rugged structure of homesteads whose owners were called farmers. Internally, they divided into more different groups: half-section owners, quarter-section owners, half quarter section owner and smallholders. The older homestead consisting of the numbers 95 and 96 (95a, 95b, 96a, 96a) was divided in the mid-17th century and both its parts existed independently on each other. Jan Jarolím (1749), Jiří Polčík (1768, 1781) and the Čerešňa family as the last one possessed the half quarter section homestead No. 95. At the time of the Čerešňa family, the smallholding was divided between Martin and Matyáš (1827). A new house was built opposite the original dwelling house – in the houses which are next door to each other lived close relatives in the beginning. Thanks to the following sales, the houses were owned by fully strange families.
In 1843, the retired farmers Jan and Eva are documented. They passed over the homestead to their daughter Magdalena and her husband Jiří Mikeska. The young family, Jiří was 23 years old, Magdalena only 14 years old at that time, gave birth to eight children between 1845 and 1867, seven of them lived to the adult age. According to the census in 1869, the retired farmer Eva Čerešniková, the widowed farmer Jiří and his children – three boys and three girls – lived here. All the nine people earned their livelihood by working on farm. Although it was just a smallholding, the cattle indicate its owners to adhere to the traditional farming – a pair of horses, one cow, two calves and four sheep are documented. In addition to the cultivation of their own not-large farmland, they must have used their horses to plough the fields of poor families, to work in the forest, to transport the products to the fairs and other occasional works.
Jiří Mikeska, the oldest son and veteran of the 3rd infantry regiment became a new owner of the smallholding in 1874. He shared the household with his daughter Magdalena, wife Marie and her mother Anna Šamahajová. The grown-up brothers and sisters were out of the smallholding and earned their living by service on farms in Blatnice, Uherský Ostroh and Veselí nad Moravou.
They had, however, their shares with 50 guldens and three sheep registered at the smallholding – altogether the smallholding was encumbered with 280 guldens. When the debt had to be paid at the beginning of the 1880s, Jiří Mikeska had no other possibility than to get into debts at the local savings institutes. First, he borrowed 200 guldens at the Civic Savings Bank in Hodonín in 1882. Probably to redeem this debt, he borrowed other 200 guldens at the Civic Savings Bank in Strážnice in 1887. This loan was amortized only in 1892. The burden of instalments affected the household economy, especially the taxes paid to the state. To avoid the execution, he had to borrow money at smaller predominantly Jewish creditors. The permanent circle of debts, loans, instalments and new debts was interrupted only by the death of the owner, which brought the economic collapse at the same time. In 1890, only the owner, her three daughters and the old retired woman lived in the house. The otherwise numerous cattle were lacking.
In 1895, the smallholding was sold to Jan Lukšík, one of the previous creditors who sold it again to Pavel Kasík after a short time. The smallholding was indebted at the financial institutions and private persons considerably. The settlement and distribution of property after Pavel Kasík mentioned the debts of more than 1000 guldens at the Mortgage Bank of the Margraviate of Moravia, at the Savings Bank and the Civic Savings Bank in Strážnice and the obligations towards dr. Ignác Robitschek and Berthold Herzog. The encumbered smallholding was bought by the Vašeks in 1901, who lived here with the family of their son before the World War I. As the census confirmed, it was a poor smallholding with one cow and one heifer, two sheep and nine hens. In 1821, the house was empty. More owners bought the house in the following years but no one lived permanently here.
Although the homestead No. 95a was legally formed at the beginning of the 19th century, its buildings follow the former half quarter section homestead No. 95. This is indicated by the usual orientation of the building on the right side of the lot and the corresponding dimensions of the chamber, cowsheds and barns situated partially on the lot No. 95b. Also the farm equipment confirms the legacy of a standard farm with a pair of horses, some cows and sheep.
After the old smallholding was divided, the building lot and the grounds behind the house were halved crosswise. A new house No. 95b was built opposite the existing building, which occupied a significant part of the yard. The gap between both houses was as narrow as let the wagon go through to the rear side the house and the barn. This arrangement survived until the early-20th century when the house No. 95b was demolished. In that time, the smallholding was reconstructed at the Strážnice Open-Air Museum. The layout of the building relates to the traditions of the Pannonian house type whose outstanding feature is a quite narrow gable-oriented building with successive construction of the rooms towards the yard depth. The common roof covers the dwelling house, the cowshed, a small barn and a small woodshed. The shared barn stood in the garden. The building is erected on a stone fender wall from unburnt brick – kotovice.
The roof with one-sided hipped end is shifted eccentrically to cover the paved doorstep. The roofing refers to the modern trend in using the fire-proof slates.
The house is entered through a hall and the entrance is protected with a massive porch. The hall houses a partially separated open-hearth kitchen in the rear part. Below the ceiling, there is a wide decorated strip created by permanent painting of smoked walls. The simply coloured decoration was made by fi ngerprints on fresh painting, then by potato stamps. The cast-iron cooktop, the walled-in boiler and the bread-oven served for food preparation. The rooms were heated-up by a quite modern system consisting of the kitchen-stove and the draught tiled stove in jizba. The only habitable room could be heated-up excluding the fire and smoke inside it. The room has two windows facing the village green. The hall and the chamber were illuminated by a small window facing the yard.
