Polygonal masonry in the village of Chusovoe

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

Yesterday I returned from my fourth trip to the village of Chusovoye.

These trips are connected with the plein air on the basis of the Sverdlovsk Art School in this village. This year, I was prompted to military work by the need to take advanced training courses). The very Spartan living conditions are more than compensated for by the beauty and energy of the place every time. Even the little-snow Ural summer, which delighted us this year with temperatures of about 12 degrees Celsius and a chilly wind, turned out to be powerless in front of local beauties and an artistic get-together.

On July 1, after honestly passing the show, we decided to pay more attention to getting to know local attractions. Since I have long been interested in the local stone wall, inconspicuously located in an overgrown ravine, I decided to continue my research armed with a slightly more powerful camera than in the memorable 2008.

Then a report from the scene.

View of the village Chusovoe from the base. The Chusovaya river, on the right is the Shaitan stone. The pale green space below is the drain from the pond, blocked off to the right by the dam. You can't see the water from here.

The investigated place is located on the descent from the base, in a ravine BEFORE the outflow from the dam (the outflow into the Chusovaya river goes further, behind a wooden shed, from here it is not visible behind the lush vegetation.).

The view of the ravine from my edge, the stones lie at the bottom, then the stone wall itself is visible. Where it starts from is not visible, but there is not enough courage to go down into the ravine - they say there are snakes). The grass below is high, powerful.

The pebbles are a little closer.

And here is the wall itself. She walks on a slope, clearly consistent.

Once again - how it looks from the outside and why it is not interesting to anyone else.

And for me it's beauty)

Those who are interested in everything megalithic-polygonal will understand my thrill and delight. The group waited for me for a long time, while I made my way closer to the edge of the ravine and entered this way and that.

How it looks from the outside.

And this is how it looks closer. Lovely, just lovely.

Well, then understanding people will see the most delicious) There are reasons to call this masonry polygonal.

More delicious.

And here. I saw something similar on dolmens (to the left of the plant)

And the patch is present) Good. And the surface is clearly visible.

The birch wedged in.

And shovchiks are good. But no one is trying to slip the dollar:)

This is closer to the river, the end of the wall. The wall runs roughly perpendicular to the river.

The exit from the ravine ends with an old bridge made of large logs and boards.

This bridge is one of the favorite motives of artists.

Exit to the river.

Bridge.

Further from the ravine, we turned into the street and went to admire the houses. Hmm, what a stump, I thought at first. It turned out - a pebble.

The most interesting thing is looking at us.

First, the top is smooth.

The second is a clear bevel, and then the surface is also even, flat.

Third, a notch on the edge indicates that the stone is cast.

The notch is closer.

A house near which a stone lies.

Then we met another one, drowned in the ground.

Presumably, the local population has long appreciated the pebbles and stole what they could in the yards.

Well, how can you not fall into stone mania! Now all local stones began to attract increased attention)

This is where I finish the reportage and continue my research.

I remembered that we had already met the old photos of Chusovoy, and went to look:

VILLAGE CHUSOVOE

The village arose when a sawmill was launched in 1721 … The Shaitanka River (its length is about 20 km) was blocked by a dam more than 10 m high and more than 80 m long. A one and a half kilometer pond was formed. A pier for the Tagil factories of Nikita Demidov also appeared at the mill. In 1727, an iron factory was built near the dam by Akinfiy Demidov. The plant, respectively, was called Shaitansky, and then, so as not to be confused with other Shaitanks, Staroshaitansky. The plant worked on local ore and produced "semi-finished products" - "kritsy", "crude iron". The krytsy were taken away for 30 miles to the Sylvensky plant, where they were forged, bringing to the required quality, and taken back to Shaitanka. Here the products were loaded onto barges and sent down the Chusovaya. After the death of Akinfiy Demidov in 1745, his son, Prokofiy Akinfievich, after a long litigation with his brother, sued for himself five plants of the Nevyansk group, including Staroshaitansky. In violation of his father's order not to sell the factories to anyone except his brothers, he almost immediately sold them to Savva Yakovlev, the largest breeder in Russia. Yakovlev, his son, grandson and other heirs (including N. A. Stenbock-Fermor's great-granddaughter) owned the plant until its closure. At the end of the 19th century, the ore base of the plant was completely depleted, and in 1905 the blast factory was closed. The plant died.

In the second half of the 19th century the existence of the plant was supported by an alloy of "iron caravans". Shaitanka was the exit to Chusovaya of the Suksunsky mountain district. 50-60 barges were sent annually by the Nevyansk plant. For caravans, the dam sluices were re-equipped, the sluice canal was lined with stone … But the cessation of rafting at the beginning of the 20th century finally undermined the industrial base of Shaitanka.

In Soviet times, Shaitanka was renamed into the village of Chusovoye. In Chusovoy there was a dairy farm and a machine-tractor workshop. There was a regular bus. The population was over a thousand people. There was a post office, a school, a hospital. The river near the Shaitan stone was crossed by a suspension bridge, over which even cars sometimes dare to pass. All this has survived to this day, albeit dilapidated, and on a "reduced scale".

The old building of the caravan chief and plant manager rises above the dam on the hill. On June 26, 1958, at the initiative of Boris Semyonov, an honored art worker of the RSFSR, and a local teacher Maria Mezenina, a rural art gallery was opened there. Part of the exhibition area was occupied by a local history exposition, and part - a collection of more than three hundred paintings donated to the gallery by the authors and owners. Now the gallery is no longer there, and the locals do not remember what happened to it. The outskirts of the village are depicted in the paintings of the artist Viktor Dobrovolsky "Gloomy Day" and "On Chusovaya. Bystrina "(both - 2005) …"

Glory to Prokudin-Gorsky!

Shaitan plant, which stopped working in 1905. 1912

[Shaitan plant owned by gr. Stenbock-Fermor]. 1912

The red arrow indicates the location of the ravine with the wall (the wall is tilted here from us). I also indicated what has survived and what is now not in sight. The circled building is part of the contemporary artist base - the dining room.

The dining room is pictured here. Chusovoy's level is higher here than now.

On the left is the Shaitan stone. His fame is not very good - several people committed suicide, throwing themselves off him. Mostly from unhappy love.

Well, the beautiful dining room in its modern form:

Here - on the other side.

Yes, from the dining room I have moved away from the topic, I am returning. We must summarize

It would seem that the above passage removes the question about the time when the wall was created:

"In the second half of the 19th century the existence of the plant was supported by an alloy of "iron caravans". Shaitanka was the exit to Chusovaya of the Suksunsky mountain district. 50-60 barges were sent annually by the Nevyansk plant. For caravans, the dam sluices were re-equipped, the sluice canal was lined with stone."

BUT

First: in the photo of Prokudin-Gorsky there is no exit into the river, where the wall is, and we see the exit in the center:

The channel is lined with wood. But, let's say, there was this way out, but by the end of the 19th century it was sewn up.

Second: I have not seen a single stone building in the village.

Logically, if you handle the stone so cheerfully and competently, why not use it more widely, build houses, outbuildings, etc. But no, here we see one crumbling brick building and a tree all around

My conclusion is that the stone wall is not "Demidov's" handiwork. They may have tried to use it, but they didn't build it. What is called - weak. With such technologies

The culture of the Demidov period came and sat on what was already before them, perhaps, and the pond was created much earlier. She could not repeat anything from what happened before.

And that's okay. Because in Chusovoy I observe with my own eyes how the culture of the late 19th century settled on the culture of the Demidov period, the culture of the Soviet period settled on it, the culture of the post-Soviet period has already settled on the culture of the Soviet period - its houses, its materials, its schemes.

A few more photos from local enthusiasts:

Yuri Isakov: We visited Chusovoy. We took more pictures. Interestingly, there is another Demidovsky plant nearby in the village. There is only the usual chipped stone masonry.

A plant in a neighboring village, from the same period.