Annunciation Chapel at the Kuzminsky Cemetery

Annunciation Church

The first temple in the settlement of Bolshoi Kuzmino (Pushkin) appeared in 1749 , when the Assumption Church was moved here from the cemetery located behind the Vangazi stream. After the transfer, she was consecrated in the name of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

March 28 ( April 8 ), 1783, the priest Stefan Ivanov, next to the wooden one, laid the foundation for a new stone church. The temple was supposedly built according to the design of D. Quarenghi . The consecration of the church took place in 1785 . The old temple was demolished in 1787 .

On March 17, 1923, after the closure of the church of the Holy Great Martyr Demetrius of Solunsky and the Holy Rev. Mary of Egypt in the building of the Maternity Shelter M. A. Drozhzhina, her throne was transferred to the Annunciation Church.

On the night of May 31, the temple was robbed: a lot of antique utensils and vestments from icons were stolen. The church was under state protection as an architectural monument.

On August 4, 1939 , by order of the Leningrad Executive Committee, the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was closed.

The temple was destroyed during the counterattack of 1943 - 1944 until the foundation.

Architecture

The temple was stone with a semicircular portico, supported by four columns. The dome of the church was low, the bell tower is small, was made in the form of a rotunda . There were three entrances to the temple.

The length of the temple was 30 meters, and the width and height - 17 meters.

The wooden iconostasis was tall, four-tiered. Painted blue with gilding.

According to some reports, the work of V. Goeste , who took as a basis the project of the Annunciation Church, took part in the competition of projects of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral of Petrozavodsk . The architect especially recommended such a temple for Petrozavodsk, emphasizing its "high artistic merit and noble simplicity" ^[1] .

Kazan Icon of the Mother of God

In the temple was the revered icon of the Mother of God of Kazan.

On April 27 ( May 9 ), 1826, the peasant woman of the village of Alexandrovka, Martha Yekimova, informed the priest Anthony Blagoveshchensky that for three nights she was “a beautiful woman in white clothes” who ordered her to go to the bank of the Kuzminki River and take the icon. At the same time, according to residents, the back gate of the courtyard was open every time. On the third night after the appearance, going out through the gate to the river, Martha saw a light in which the image went down to the shore behind the garden.

The cousin of the Kuzminsk church witnessed a miracle. The event was reported to Metropolitan Seraphim (Glagolevsky) , who commanded to establish an image in the Annunciation Church. The icon was highly respected. Already on June 3 (15), 1826, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna visited the church with the heir Alexander Nikolaevich and the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna .

Subsequently, the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God was built on the site of the appearance of the icon.

In May 1922, the silver robe was removed from the icon, and in July the icon itself was removed. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.

Parish

At the beginning of the 20th century , the parish included:

• settlement Big Kuzmino
• Kamenka village (the intersection of Pulkovo highway and the Ring Road) ^[2]
• Aleksandrovskaya village
• Verkhneye Kuzmino village (now the territory of the reservoir near the Pulkovo Observatory)
• Krasnaya Slobodka (Gatchinsky highway district in Pushkin)
• Redkoe Kuzmino village (now Redkoe Kuzmino street, Aleksandrovskaya village) ^[2]
• Novosyolki (territory in the area of ​​modern Sapernaya street Pushkin)
• Perelesino (territory in the eastern part of the military airport in Pushkin)

Chapels were assigned to the parish:

• Two in the church gates, built in 1841 - 1842 according to the design of D. E. Efimov in the Empire style.
• A wooden chapel in the village of Kamenka, built in 1913 . Subsequently, in the 1920s , a church was built here in the name of Alexander Nevsky, destroyed during the war.

Clergy

Traditions

In the temple, traditionally committed:

• On the feast of the Ascension of the Lord - a large procession around the village, in memory of the former fire.
• Religious procession in the village, in memory of getting rid of cholera in 1831
  • June 23 - in the Big Kuzmino
  • June 24 - in Kamenka
  • June 26 - in Aleksandrovka
  • On Ilyinsky Friday - in Novosyolka, Krasnaya Sloboda and Perelesino
  • On Ilyin’s day, in Rare and Upper Kuzmino.

On June 3, 1996, on the site of the destroyed church, the abbot of the Fedorovsky Cathedral, Father Superior Markell (Vetrov) , consecrated a memorable wooden eight-pointed cross.

The chapel was laid in September 2005 on the foundation of the church. The design of the chapel was developed by S. N. Kondratiev and executed in the pseudopskovsky style.

In the summer of 2007, the construction of the chapel was completed.

The place where the church (foundation) stood was assigned by the KGIOP to the revealed objects of the cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia. ^[3]

The chapel currently houses a wooden cross and a tombstone of the priest of Catherine’s Cathedral Nikolai Alekseevich Cherensky (died on October 7 [19], 1899 ) and his wife Anna Savvishna, transferred here from the cemetery ^[4] .

• Folk catalog of orthodox architecture
• Temples of St. Petersburg

• Meshchaninov M. Yu. Temples of Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk and their immediate vicinity: A Brief Historical Guide. - 2nd ed., Rev. and additional .. - St. Petersburg. : Genio Loci, 2007 .-- S. 369-376. - ISBN 5-9900655-3-1 .