Part 1. Mysterious Crimea. Kerch.
This time we will talk about the famous Massandra wine factory. This brand is famous, it is difficult to find products on free sale. Now the plant is mainly fulfilling the sovereign's order, and is actually on the balance sheet of the presidential administration. For wine connoisseurs, I can say that you will not spend your time here in vain, but I was interested in something else here, namely architecture. But let's start in order.
So, according to official data, the place for the plant was bought in 1885 by the sovereign from Count Vorontsov, as part of his entire wine-making complex, dispersed throughout the Crimea. Since that time, the construction of a winery begins there. Since 1891, the plant produces the first products under its own brand. The plant contains workshops and famous cellars that radiate from the main tower in a fan-shaped system. There is information that these cellars were walled up during the war so that the enemy could not get there. The plant met with its cordiality, but apart from the tasting room, it was not possible to get anywhere. Bad luck. Although the very first acquaintances with the architecture of the plant raised a lot of questions.
The factory management was struck by the strange grilles on the roof. Snow in that area is rather an exception than a rule, it makes no sense to build protection against falling snow. Although such gratings are far from uncommon, they are found on the roofs of many old buildings, regardless of the climate. Even Thailand has it. But in this case, the feeling is created that something is missing in these gratings or that something has been cut down. And what could have been cut down?
It is not clear how an incomprehensible ball was half-walled up in the wall of the tasting room.
Promotional video:
If you look closely, you can see that the pillar with this ball and the wall of the building look like different things with each other. The feeling that there was some kind of platform with similar pillars up to the walls in this place, and then it was simply laid with masonry and made a room. They did not demolish the pillar, apparently too lazy. It happens. Interestingly, has anyone investigated what the ball is on the pole, what is it made of and what is inside it?
There are metal plates everywhere on the cellar building. These are connections within the building that go through from opposite walls and are fastened with such overlays. What were they for? The walls are already quite stable, and if the wall began to fall, such an overlay would not have saved it for sure.
And there are many such overlays. Unfortunately, inside the tasting room, all the ceilings are sheathed so that nothing at all can be seen in the roof.
Well, the highlight of the program - there is such a thing on the main tower of the cellars. It is too difficult for a conventional lightning rod. And on the corner of the building there is the same overlay as on small buildings. It was as if the tower had been pulled down diagonally from both sides.
If you look closely, the windows above are covered with something. Why are they in so many? If for ventilation of the cellars, then this makes no sense - with a step of several meters, there are lucarnes on the cellars. And one more detail:
There was not enough stone, and they made masonry from what was? Likely. Apart from shell rock, there are no other materials in those parts. All other stone materials are imported.
And here you can clearly see that the cornices are made of white stone. What is under the cornice is clearly done with stones from a local quarry, with a slight fit and seams. These stones were cut out in the catacombs with an ordinary saw, and its traces on the edges cannot be confused with anything. Such laying does not require much skill and is done quickly enough. What can not be said at all about the cornices. They were hewn and fitted very carefully. Probably, it would be nice to take a look at the photo of the construction of this object.
What is it? If you look closely, the walls are already standing, only damaged and filled up. In the lower photo, in the background, the scaffolding is on the outside of the building. They stand like this only during restoration (builders, correct, if not right). The top photo shows how unevenly layers of earth covered some existing structures, and it is dug out for subsequent restoration. It would have been much easier to open these cellars with tunnels, but apparently everything was already ready, it was only necessary to restore it. And the high cutting height only indicates that the earth was applied unevenly to the structures. Obviously, some kind of element fell asleep, probably the same one that brought all the first floors of buildings from Siberia to Europe. In Crimea, by the way, the height of the ground floors is even higher than in the middle latitudes. Conclusion - the plant was built on the remains of some kind of structure,previously destroyed by some element. The stones from this structure were used in the construction, and the missing stone was used from the local quarry. But back to our tower. Unfortunately, there is very little material in the public domain about the view of the tower before 1915.
If you look closely, then on the spiers of the roof there is some kind of light object, which is fixed in those very rogules.
This is a photo of the 30s of the 20th century. As you can see, there was a certain object in the rogules, which is now missing. It is possible that the spiers were redone again. In addition, in the sealed windows, considered earlier, some objects are clearly visible, which in some places are still preserved. What could it possibly be? From the point of view of modern science, absolutely nothing. But just like that in the old days, they did not do such delights, especially on such unitary buildings as a winery. As for the star, this is clearly the fruit of the era in which the photo was taken. Before her, there was clearly something else hanging there. At first glance, this is again another puzzle, but if you look at it all differently, then once again we begin to understand how little we know about the recent past. Since this whole tower combines cellars, and in large numbers,then lighting inside this whole system is extremely necessary. There is no point in talking about torches in this case, for obvious reasons. You can certainly imagine an industrial generator of that time, standing somewhere out there on the territory, but with such a system of cellars, its power would be such that the structure, including the pipe, would be commensurate in height with this tower. But none of the photos is even close.
As a result, it turns out that our spiers with a roof railing were once again nothing more than a system for obtaining electricity from the atmosphere to organize the lighting of the cellars. Incomprehensible objects standing in the niches of the tower, as well as the horns on the spiers, were most likely luminous elements that were used for aesthetics, well, they were also indicators of the system's performance. Actually, the same system was on the roof of the plant management, there is now the fence, but the spiers are just not enough - they were dismantled. And since all the solutions were typical, most likely the same system was at the winery (see the main photo). The more we learn, the more we understand that we know nothing at all (ancient Greek wisdom).
Until next time.
Continuation "Mysterious Crimea. Part 3. Gurzuf".