The mills of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Needed or not? And what to do with historical monuments?

The first steam mills appeared on the territory of Ukraine at the end of the 19th century. Most often they were built by foreign specialists using European technologies and were equipped with a steam boiler and machinery of foreign manufacture. The flour was produced of a finer grind than at water- and wind-powered structures. Merchants and landowners approached the construction of flour-milling enterprises not only from a practical point of view; they adorned the buildings with architectural decorative elements.

 

Pavlohrad. The former 4th-class mill with a production capacity of 625 thousand poods of finished output per year. Now an administrative and residential building

The mill in villages and small towns was one of the significant objects, the most beautiful and presentable.

Novopavlivka. The mill. In operation

After the October Revolution, nationalisation and collectivisation, the breadwinners became the property of the peasants' production associations and continued to work until the collapse of the collective farms.

Slovianka. The former mill of the 'Radianska Ukraina' collective farm. In operation

With the change in forms of ownership, not all enterprises were lucky with their new owners.

 

Dmytrivka. The former mill operates as an oil press

A large part of the mills has been destroyed or is in a dilapidated state. In the village of Yurivka in Dnipropetrovsk region, a steam mill was built at the beginning of the 20th century.

 

In the years of the Hitlerite occupation, the structure suffered and was restored in 1956, as attested by the date on the pediment.

 

Yurivka. The steam mill

The residents recall that the mill processed local wheat and the flour was of the highest grade. For a time this workhorse served as an oil press, and its output was also in demand. After the closure of the collective farm, the building is not used, the equipment has been dismantled, the metal covering torn off. The windowpanes are partly broken out. The two-storey building of red brick stands on Tsentralna Street on the Pavlohrad-Lozova highway, which connects two regions - Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv.

Yurivka. The steam mill

The beautiful building with four wooden doors and hexagonal windows framed by brick casings has the status of a monument of architecture. Not all people of Yurivka understand the value of the settlement's historical and cultural heritage; they were surprised that someone took an interest in an 'abandoned wreck'. There is an opinion that the dilapidated building is threatened with demolition. It is clear that there are no funds for the upkeep and repair of the former mill, and there never will be. The little pearl of Yurivka is on the brink of disappearance, when it could have been a tourist landmark on the 'Mills of Ukraine' route.

 

Yurivka. The steam mill

It is visible from the Chaplyne-Dnipro electric train; it rises above the thickets that have covered the wounds of the former workhorse.

The settlement Pysmenne of the Vasylkivka district of Dnipropetrovsk region was founded with the opening of a railway station in 1884. The German colonist Kilman erected ten houses for the near-station settlement, and the entrepreneur Andrii Petrovych Fast, in the 1880s, founded a grain-farming operation on the fertile Ukrainian lands, building a mill where they ground flour and produced semolina and groats. It is known that the Mennonite Germans were good householders. For the construction of factories, mills and hospitals they used brick of their own manufacture. During the Second World War the flour-milling enterprise suffered; the building stood without a roof and people marvelled at the sturdiness of the structure.

 

Pysmenne. The Fast mill

In the post-war years the mill was restored, and the millstones served for the good of the people at the disposal of the 'Batkivshchyna' collective farm. To the two-storey red-brick building, premises were added in which an oil press was opened. To the yard by the mill, the peasants brought grain by cart from all over the district; the flour and oil were renowned for their high taste qualities. It turned out that with the collapse of the collective farms the mill was needed by no one, and no benefactor was found to make wise use of the heritage. The half-ruined breadwinner has stood for more than a decade now. The arched entrance and the windows are framed with brick casings. The doors and frames are knocked out, but on one window a grille has survived. Inside there still remain wooden beams and stairs. In the basement, where the equipment was installed, broken brick is piled up.

 

Pysmenne. The Fast mill

The cultivation of grain crops has always been the most important branch of the agrarian region of the Left Bank. Beside the mill and the station stretch the warehouses of the grain-receiving enterprise, but no use was found for the former workhorse. And so, in oblivion and thickets, a historical and cultural monument is vanishing, one that could have been an attractive object for travellers and researchers of the Mennonite heritage.

Pysmenne. The Fast mill

For more than 100 years, in Mezhova the millstones turned at a mill built in 1904 near the railway station. This workhorse was erected by the best firm for building such enterprises - the association for the arrangement of flour mills of Anton Erlanger, who built more than 800 mills in tsarist Russia, for which he was called the 'flour-milling king'. In its architectural features, the four-storey building resembled a palace.

The romanticism of this hard worker, which ground more than 2,000 poods a day, was manifested in the pointed pediments, the little turrets on the attics, the arched windows and the patterned cornice. And this building, unique in its beauty, would have known no wear, were it not for the fire in 2017. The mangled historical building stood for about another year and was taken apart for its brick by the new owners of the grain-receiving enterprise, on whose territory the mill was located.

Mezhova. The demolished mill of 1904