Chusovoye: polygonal masonry in the Urals

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Among experts, the village of Chusovoye is considered a special place. This is due to the unusual stone wall, which has elements of polygonal masonry, characteristic of the megalithic structures of ancient times scattered around the world. According to some reports, polygonal masonry from Chusovoy is unique not only for the Urals, but is also the only example throughout Russia.

The village of Chusovoye was founded on September 1, 1727, on this day the Staroshaitansky Demidov plant produced the first melt. You can read about this in any information source about the history of the Urals. It should be noted that the Staroshaitansky plant was destroyed at the beginning of the twentieth century, its ruins are preserved in the photograph of S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky, 1912.

The stone wall is located near the water, it consists of large stone blocks, densely lying on top of each other, is 135 m long and about 4x high.

According to the official history, the stone wall is the pier, with the help of which the barges were loaded with cast iron for their subsequent shipment downstream of the river. And here the first question arises. Why is this pier large and stone, although all the other pier on the river were smaller and made of larch? Let's omit the discussion of financial and labor costs for construction, we will not think about where these stones come from (there is no quarry or quarry nearby), we will leave only one question: why? A more plausible version is that this wall was already built much earlier (or maybe later?), And was simply used as a pier.

Previously, this place looked like this, the bridge is almost in the same place:

Fragments of hydraulic fortifications typical for Demidov times remained under it.

Similar structures - larch log cabins filled with stones, clay and earth - can be found in the old dam in Mariinsk, as well as in the wooden dam of the Staroutkinskiy plant.

The stones are very even, in some places covered with moss. An even surface is clearly visible if you stand at the top and look along the wall.

The laying order is maintained from top to bottom.

The joints between the blocks are really very narrow in some places, the stones are very tight.

Here are the polygonal elements themselves.

Such an angle of 270 degrees is quite difficult to perform even now, and according to the official history, all this was done in a quarry of the 18th century. There are quite a few similar elements.

There are a lot of speculations about the origin of the wall, some authors point out that it is not at all on the plans of the Shaitan plant, others say that it was built centuries ago, others believe that these are the remains of the walls of an ancient fortification, the so-called. a star-shaped medieval fortress, traces of which have been found throughout Siberia. There are more questions than answers …