Kärkna Manor

Kärkna began as the estate of Estonia's oldest and largest monastery. The Cistercian abbey on the lower Amme river was settled in 1228 by Hermann, the first bishop of Tartu, who spent his old age here and was buried in its cemetery. Russian troops damaged it as early as 1234. The monastery was built as a regular fortified enclosure about 100 by 120 metres, ringed by a moat filled from the dammed river, its water mill probably among the oldest in Estonia. After the Livonian War it became a crown estate. The later manor house has vanished entirely, its site dug away for a quarry in the late 1960s.