Church of the Presentation of the Lord (Tula)

Construction

At the beginning of the XVIII century there were two churches: wooden in the name of the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the chapel of the Great Martyr Nikita and stone in the name of the Presentation of the Lord . Perhaps this circumstance explains why the bell tower of the later church stood separately: it could be located on the site of a wooden church.

In 1747, the Nikitsky chapel of the wooden church collapsed. After that, the chapel in the name of the great martyr Nikita was attached to a stone church. But the latter, too, apparently deteriorated. In 1773, clergy and parishioners of the Sretensky church wrote about her in her petition that she “grew from a very long time ago into the ground, so that in the rain, water came up to the very doors of the church and almost poured into the church itself, from which in the walls gray spots showed up, and the inside was not wide ”, and asked for permission -“ to dismantle this church of God and build a new stone about three thrones on the same mound ... ”. A charity letter was given.

The new church building in the name of the Presentation of the Lord began to be erected in 1774. The chapels - in the name of the Apostle John the Theologian (right) and the great martyr Nikita (left) - were completed two years later; the main volume - by 1785. The temple in the documents of the XIX century was called both Sretensky and Novonikitsky (unlike Staronikitsky, whose remains have survived to this day near the street of the same name).

In the middle of the XIX century, new iconostases were built: in 1855 - in the aisle of St. John the Evangelist, in 1860 - in the aisle of the great martyr Nikita. In 1883, a major overhaul of the cracked dome of the temple took place; then a new iconostasis of the main altar was set up.

The Sretenskaya church ensemble looked good both from the opposite right bank of Upa, and from Posolskaya Street. By the way, the Ambassadorial was already much more current Soviet. In place of the houses that stood next to the bell tower, today there is a lawn, a stop pavilion and shops. At the temple there was a chapel that existed since 1831. A parish school was opened in the parish in 1894. The nearby part of the Upa embankment - Sretenskaya embankment - got its name from the temple. In the early 1920s, it was renamed the Embankment of the Red Smiths.

Belfry

The construction of the bell tower began in 1780. The Tula architect Kozma Sokolnikov designed its project and supervised the construction work. In 1789, he, and in 1790, Nikifor Sokolnikov (who replaced Kozma as a supervisor), in appeals to the provincial authorities indicated that the new unfinished bell tower threatens to collapse - due to a weak obstruction of the foundation and poor-quality ("unfit") brick. The construction was suspended. Specialists conducted a survey of the facility and concluded that the building should be dismantled.

But the construction of the first floor of the bell tower has already been spent 7,000 rubles. Therefore, in order to avoid large losses, they decided not to demolish it, but to try to eliminate the miscalculations. In a sagging buta, voids were filled with piles and sealed with stone and rubble. The started second tier of the bell tower was dismantled and a new project was developed. The photos show the disproportion of the powerful lower tier and the lightened second and third. There were 6 bells weighing about 300 pounds on the bell tower. The largest of them, the 203-pound was cast in 1840 in the care and zeal of the parishioner of merchant Alexander Ivanovich Sapunov. The bell tower of the temple stood separately, on the other side of the Metalist Street (approximately where the entrance to the underpass is now).

Demolition

In the reference book “All Tula and the Tula Province”, published in 1925, in the section “Tula Buildings as Historical Monuments”, the style of the Sretensky Church is described as “Petersburg Baroque”. In 1930, an article by Professor A. I. Nekrasov on architectural monuments in Tula was published in the journal Tula Krai. About Sretensky church, it was said in it as follows: “It has a completion, that is, a lantern, almost identical with Ascension, but sensual corporeality triumphs even lower, according to the main massif of the church, allocated in a cube; as if hollows and bulges between the columns give a play of light and shadow; this is helped by the “Chinese” roof lamination and refinement of proportions. This is one of the most elegant buildings of Tula, refined baroque. "

However, the same article quite calmly reports that the bell tower of the Sretensky church "is broken due to the laying of the tram line." And in the footnote - that "the case of the dismantling of the church is pending in the district executive committee." From the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies, a letter dated February 20, 1930 was sent to the Presidium of the Tula Oblast Executive Committee: "The Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved your decision on the demolition of the Sretenskaya Church and the bell tower, which is brought to your attention ...".

A little earlier, in 1929, one of the documents on the Sretenskaya Church said the following: “At present, the Gostorg of the RSFSR organizes the sale of iconostases abroad (in whole or in fragments), and the mentioned iconostasis can be used for this purpose. Taking into account that the Sretenskaya church is being liquidated by pouring bread, the preservation of the iconostasis in place will absolutely not interfere with its use. It is only necessary to sew up the iconostasis at the height of the first tier with a dog. ” Whether the Tula authorities managed to realize this very commercial deal is unknown. Bells, candlesticks, icon vestments, icon lamps and other non-ferrous metal products went for remelting through the Tula office of Scrap Metal. Gold and silver items - in the State Bank. Icons and iconostases without gilding, for which there were no buyers, were simply destroyed. Gilded icons and icon cases from the Sretensky church were sent to the Moscow state fund of the OGPU.

Sretensky temple was demolished in the early 1930s. At the site of the temple there is now a square with a monument to the creator of the Russian three-linear rifle of the 1891 model S.I. Mosin (1849-1902).

In the late 1970s, during the construction of the underpass, ancient cemeteries were affected - probably the graveyards that existed in the above churches. In the vertical walls of the trench clearly visible "coffins in the section." True, in a day or two the construction was surrounded by a tall fence, and further finds were hidden from the eyes of the Tula.

• Lozinsky R. R. "Pages of the Past."