The routes of rural tourism in the Donetsk region include the village of Prelesne, known for its
Bantysh palace of the 19th century and the museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity. The museum is recognised as one of the seven wonders of the Sloviansk district and is the only one of its kind in Eastern Ukraine.
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| Prelesne. The museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity |
At
Pyrohiv, the largest skansen in Ukraine, several regions with exhibits of ethnographic architecture are represented, while in Prelesne you can see a 19th-century rural homestead of Slobozhanshchyna.
The central place in the exposition is occupied by a peasant hut.
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| Prelesne. The museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity |
It was donated by a resident of Prelesne, R. A. Bilichenko.
Such wooden four-walled huts with reed roofs were built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In this ecologically clean house, samples of the interiors of that time have been gathered: household objects, furniture, ceramic tableware, icons, rushnyks, embroidered shirts.
The heating stove played not only a functional role but was also an aesthetic decoration of the home. If there was a girl of marriageable age in the family, the stove was painted with flowers, and in the chest was kept the dowry, woven and embroidered by her own hands.
The housewives could not do without weaving and spinning looms.
Around the large table gathered large village families, in which there were traditionally many children — the future helpers in the hard peasant labour.
In the 18th-19th centuries, windmills were widespread on the territory of the present-day Donetsk region; they towered among the steppes on the hills, cleaving the sky and playing with the wind.
Often they served the neighbouring villages too, from which the peasants came on carts with sacks of grain.
Four blades, like the wings of an enormous bird, using the force of the wind, set the aerodynamic mechanism in motion.
Around a post dug into the ground, the wooden tower rotated.
The miller, a man of a respected profession, had several helpers, often family members, who during the harvest season had to work tirelessly.
The hard-working windmill was brought to Prelesne from the village of Bryhadyrivka in the Kharkiv region, and restored by craftsmen from Troitske, as a memorial plaque attests.
To move the giant, as tall as a two-storey house, it was taken apart into logs and then reassembled anew in the new place, like a construction set.
Some parts had to be replaced so that the 200-year-old structure would last longer.
100-200 years ago, wood was widely used in construction, and the woodwork masters reached a high level.
On the museum's grounds there is a storehouse, fitted out as a joinery workshop.
It keeps wooden items and carpentry tools.
Such an aid on one's homestead could be had only by a well-to-do owner.
There were smithies in nearly every village, and in the Prelesne museum there is a forge that served people for about a century.
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| Prelesne. The museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity |
The blacksmith's craft is considered one of the most ancient and was prestigious in all times.
The blacksmith worked with a helper, a hammerman, who struck the anvil with a large hammer, while the blacksmith, with a small hammer, indicated the place for the blow and directed the work.
Next to the smithy are gathered metal samples of the agricultural implements that the peasants used for tilling the soil, sowing and harvesting: a harrow, sickles, scythes, ploughs.
Another storehouse could have been a henhouse.
The surrounding coniferous-and-deciduous massifs and the riot of the flowering steppe grasses served as a honey-bearing base for the local apiaries. The tree-beekeepers cut out the core in a tree, inserted frames into it and covered the log with straw.
The breathing material provided reliable waterproofing and the preservation of the bees. What the little houses for bees looked like a hundred years ago, when they did not die en masse as they do now, can be seen in the skansen.
Here and there in the villages, sweep wells have survived, which now look like real landmarks.
Water was raised from the well by means of a lever with a counterweight on one arm and a bucket of water on the other. A model of the well, resembling a bird, has been set up on the museum homestead.
The initiator of the museum's creation was a teacher, local-history scholar and artist, Oleksandr Ivanovych Shevchenko.
From 1983 the Master, together with his pupils, gathered exhibits around the district.
The enthusiasts searched for, brought, studied, put in order and arranged the unique finds.
In the school, whose history began in 1790, the archaeological and ethnographic collections are kept.
Sadly, the hall with the exhibits and with the only museum of children's creativity in Ukraine was closed. On a slip of paper glued to the window, the museum's working hours were written out, but despite the working hours, the doors were closed.
It was impossible to go inside the village house too, to examine the interior. I had to be content with what I saw through the little windows.
Sunday, convenient for tourists, turned out to be the day off for the museum keeper. The telephone number given in some articles about the museum is out of service. Only the ancient idols, like mute guardians, silently greeted the visitors of the skansen.
Three stone sculptures, left by nomads in the 9th-12th centuries, were found by researchers on the territory of Prelesne.
A peculiar stone park has been laid out on the glade by the museum.
On some of the statues bas-reliefs are carved; there are fragments resembling a human image.
But most of all there are millstones, sawn from sandstone, a stone that does not lend itself to polishing.
Having visited the open-air museum in Prelesne, you can learn what the settlements in the Donetsk steppes were like before the industrialists here erected factories and mines.
All the exhibits are in good condition, the grounds are well tended, and the wonderful impressions would have been rounded off by the account of a professional guide.
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| Prelesne. The museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity |
The museum of folk architecture, everyday life and children's creativity is located 20 kilometres from Sloviansk and 32 kilometres from Kramatorsk.
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| Prelesne. A street paved with cobblestones |
Address: village of Prelesne, Sloviansk district, Donetsk region.
Coordinates: 48°50'4"N 37°17'26"E
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