Windmill from the village of Razlivnoe (museum «Kostromskaya Sloboda»)

Short description
The windmill from the village of Razlivnoe (Soligalichsky district, Kostroma region) was built around the beginning of the 20th century, was transported to the museum of wooden architecture "Kostromskaya sloboda" (Kostroma region) in 1969. Inverted postbased mill with six sails and one pair of millstones. Log construction. Unique details: unusual porch location, general architecture. Was used as a flour mill (flour).

Condition	The windmill is conserved
Status	In a museum, but not used
Mechanism	Not preserved

Additional description
The mill from the village of Razlivnoe is unique! Besides being one of the inverted post-based mills, this is the only mill of a very interesting design: a four-pitched roof, a porch which is the part of the main log construction and which is opposite the sails (usually the porch is hinged from the side). Such a constructive change leads to the whole set of unique solutions:
1) The windshaft is fixed to the beam on the porch, and it is where it is adjusted by the wedges, i.e. practically outside (usually it is inside a mill on the back wall),
2) The ladder is perpendicular to the porch, the fastening can be seen in the center of the lower porch beam (usually the ladder descends under the porch and is hung down on the hooks (kuritsi in Russian))
3) At the bottom the ladder apparently is connected to the tailpole (this can be seen in the old pictures and it explains how they lifted the ladder when turning the barn),
4) The tailpole is double, the left part is attached to the wall at 45 degrees, the right part goes under the railing of the porch,
5) The porch is divided into three parts: a gate (its right pillar is lost, but its sockets are visible), a ladder, a windshaft,
6) Since the porch never touches the sails in any way, to check the sails there was made an opening in the front of the log construction.

No existing construction like this is known. The most similar construction could have been found in the mill from the village of Maloe Tokarevo, that was also transported to Kostromskaya Sloboda, but, that unfortunately was lost in the mid-1990s (here ). To read about all Kostroma mills go here.
Judging by the photographs, there existed even more exotic versions of the porches in Kostromskaya Sloboda. For example, here the porch is “bent” along the barn.

Pay attention to the square hole next to the windshaft of the mill. Such a hole can be seen only in one other mill - Nizhny Novgorod post-based mill. These are the only two mills whose sails cannot be reached from the side of the porch, and which are at the same time too high to reach from the ground. So, this small square hole was used to get onto a small platform for their maintenance.

The mill is not marked on the museum schemes and does not have any ladders for inspection. Unfortunately, the mechanism of the mill is completely lost, except for the millstones. Using the mill from the village of Razlivnoye as an example, we show how to restore the function of the mill mechanisms by examining the existing notches and holes.

In conclusion, we would like to note that the mill is a part of the three-mill landscape of Kostromskaya Sloboda, one of two preserved landscapes like this in Russia. Unfortunately, there haven’t been left any places with a large number of mills in Russia.