Eleja is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

, center of the

Eleja parish Eleja Parish ( lv, Elejas pagasts) is an administrative unit of Jelgava Municipality in the Semigallia Semigallia, also spelt Semigalia, ( lv, Zemgale; german: Semgallen; lt, Žiemgala; pl, Semigalia; liv, Zemgāl) is one of the Historica ...

Jelgava municipality Jelgava Local Municipality ( lv, Jelgavas novads) is a municipality in Zemgale, Latvia. The municipality was formed in 2009 by merging Eleja parish, Glūda parish, Jaunsvirlauka parish, Lielplatone parish, Līvbērze parish, Platone parish, ...

. Number of inhabitants - around 800. Located 27 km south from

Jelgava Jelgava (; german: Mitau, ; see also other names) is a state city in central Latvia about southwest of Riga with 55,972 inhabitants (2019). It is the largest town in the region of Zemgale (Semigalia). Jelgava was the capital of the united Duch ...

it spreads along the A8 highway crossroads with the regional P103 road. Meitene railroad station located in the village is no longer used for passenger service. The actual village of Meitene is a couple of kilometers south, right on the Latvia-Lithuania border.

History

During the 16th century the Eleja manor was established by the Eleja river. Owned first by Georg von Tiesenhausen from the

Tyzenhaus Tyzenhaus (, , , ) was a noble family of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of Baltic Germans, German extraction. It was active in the Duchy of Livonia, Duchy of Courland and the northern Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Among the best-known members of ...

family and later by Ulrich von Baehr (''Bähr'') in 1753 it was purchased by Count Johann Friedrich von Medem. Medem family owned it until the land reform of 1920. Between the 1806 and 1810 a grand new

Eleja manor house Eleja manor house (German: ''Herrenhaus Elley'') is the name of the ruins of a destroyed manor house, Manorialism, manor complex buildings and the surrounding English landscape garden. It is located in Eleja, Latvia. During its 19th-century heyda ...

was built here, which was burned down by the retreating Russian army in July 1915 and further demolished during the 1920-30s. Some efforts at renovating the manor house building complex and the arched stone fence started in 2015. During the German military occupation the Jelgava–Meitene Railway was built through here, with a

narrow-gauge railroad A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structur ...

connection between Meitene and

Bauska Bauska () is a town in Bauska Municipality, in the Zemgale region of southern Latvia. Bauska is located from the Latvian capital Riga, 62 km (38.5 mi) from Jelgava and from the Lithuanian border on the busy European route E67. The to ...

built in 1916. During this time a new village named ''Vilkudārzs'' (Wolf's garden) started growing here. On 1932 the place was given the rights of village and on 1936 given its present name – Eleja. From 1949 until 1956 it was the administrative center of the Eleja district. On February 21, 1950 it was named a worker's village; on 1961 elevated to the level of

urban-type settlement Urban-type settlementrussian: посёлок городско́го ти́па, translit=posyolok gorodskogo tipa, abbreviated: russian: п.г.т., translit=p.g.t.; ua, селище міського типу, translit=selyshche mis'koho typu, ab ...

, which it lost after 1990 territorial reform when Eleja and the surrounding Eleja country territory was united in a single parish. From 2009 included in the Jelgava municipality. Despite all the territorial changes, Eleja still is the center of the local area where the local administration, high school, kindergarten, library and community center are located. Latraps, one of Latvia's largest farmers co-operatives, has a production site here.Processing station of all agricultural products in Eleja
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External links

Eleja manor and park

Eleja parish website

References

{{Reflist Villages in Latvia