The base of a mill-on-pillars (“stolbovka”) is the land-tie, around which all the mill barn turns around.
The trunks of larch of big diameter were usually used for the leaning post. The pomor wind mills on the leaning posts had the unique construction type.
Their two-storey barn is situated on a high rectangular crib pier, narrowing on the top. The mechanism consisting of the cam with the gear stood on the first floor, the flour mill arrangement - on the second floor. On the left side of the barn there was the mill porch, to which the step ladder was attached. It didn’t touch the ground or interfered with the turn of the barn.
All the mill’s construction is nailless, and in the mechanism there is the minimum amount of metal details. The turn of the barn was carried out by means of the turning mechanism, fixed to the back wall of the barn.
This procedure could be carried out manually by 2 or 3 people or with the help of the simple turning tool which was attached to each of the mill’s pillars in turn.
A windmill was not a vital building for a peasant’s life – such as, for example, a bath-house or a barn. It was, primarily, the marker of a wealthy house, and the prestige of its owner. It was also a means of earning money because its owner grinded his neighbours’ grain as well.
The mills-on-pillars appeared in the North together with the settlers from Novgorod, where this type of mills was wide-spread till the 18th century and later replaced by more modern types.
Such mills were common on the territory of the Mezenskiy district, the northern and the middle part of the Pinezhskiy district, around Arkhangelsk, along the Winter and Summer coasts of the White Sea.
In the Mezenskiy district they often neighboured water mills in the same place. At the end of the 18th century in Mezen there were 16 wind mills in this district, including Ust-Tsilma and Pustozersk- 11 water mills and 32 wind mills with one flour mill arrangement.
In the middle of the 19th century in Arkhangelsk region there were 264 water mills and 1116 wind mills for 222 thousand people. In 1870 in the Mezenskiy district there were 60 mills, in Azapolye there were 12 mills, in Kimzha there were 10 mills, in Mezen and Lampozhnya there were 5 mills (for each one),in the Pogorelets there were 3 mills.
According to some data, by the beginning of the 20th century the number of mills reached 1200-1500 in the region. Sometimes in large villages (for example in the Azapolye village in the Mezenskiy district) the number of mills reached 30.
Later in some of the kolkhozes several mills were being used till the middle of the 20th century. However many of them were gradually mouldering, influenced by time, were being dismantled to leave more space for arable lands.
So by the beginning of the 21st sentury there left only 8 mills of such type in Mezen. Two pf then, transported from the Tselegora village (Obroskov’s mill) and from the Azapolye village (Yudin’s mill) are situated in the Mezen sector of the museum of wooden architecture “Malye Korely”.
6 of them are preserved in the building place, they are: 2 mills in the Leshukonskiy district (the Kesloma village and the Malaya Nisogora village), 4 mills in the Mezenskiy district ( Deryagin’s mill and Voronukhin’s mill in the Kimzha village, Drannikov’s mill and the Vodyniny brothers’ mill in the Pogorelets village).