Dudin's windmill from the village of Morshanka

Short description
The shattered windmill from the village of Morshanka (St. Petersburg district, Saratov region) was built in 1840, was located on a historical site. Smock mill with four sails and two pairs of millstones. Log construction. Was used as a flour mill (flour).

ConditionThe windmill is destroyed, the monument doesn't exist anymore
MechanismIs saved in a different place


News about the windmill (in Russian)
Мысли о реставрации: http://www.4vsar.ru/news/67186.html
Начало реставрации: http://news.sarbc.ru/main/2016/12/24/192539.html
Мельница снесена: http://www.vzsar.ru/blogs/3445


Additional description
«Only recently the mill was on the verge of destruction, but at the end of 2016, according to the news, they took care of it. If everything goes well, there will be another museum with the mill that hasn't been transported from its historical site» - this is what we wrote a year ago, in winter 2017. However, things have turned out differently.

The historical mill was demolished; the windshaft and the vertical shaft with all the gears were previously removed. Approximately forty meters away from it, a replica was built. It was equipped with an electric drive for the historical millstones, and the remaining shafts were installed (traditionally, as in most unlocked mills, no mechanism on the first floor has survived). You can see more here. It is difficult to understand the reasons for building a replica (one of the opinions is here. However, it should be noted that two tasks have been solved: the remaining historical mechanism has been preserved, and the museum that popularizes mills is formed.

We were already preparing to add this "New mill with historical elements" to the base, but we paid attention to the photo here. The photo shows that the new building does not have an upper part that turns in the horizontal plane: the roof of the building is rigidly fixed to its walls. This means that the building is a house or a tower, but not a windmill at all, because it can't be turned to face the wind by the tailpole.

Therefore, we can conclude that there is no more windmill in Morshanka (the only one in the Saratov Region), but there is a mill museum, which stores a historical mechanism and recreates the grinding procedure on historical millstones using an electric motor. Morshanka hasn't become the fifth museum mill on its historical site, but it now has a museum. What an unusual story!

Finally, you can read about Saratov and Samara mills in this article here.