Mikhailovskoye (estate near Moscow)

The village of Bynevo passed into the possession of the Krechetnikovs after the events of the Time of Troubles ^[1] . Two-storey house with a long facade, mezzanine and monograms "M. K. ”on the balconies was built at the expense of the Tula and Ryazan governor M.N. Krechetnikov . In 1784, the estate was visited by A. T. Bolotov ^[2] :

I found here a wonderful stone house near the governor, in almost everything similar to our Mother of God , and a beautiful manor. He lived here as though some English lord, and everything was tidied up with boyars here. Behind the house was a regular garden , with many pavilions and different houses, and in front of the house was an extensive place with several ponds, and behind them I saw the Pakhra River, flowing through a beautiful bend, and beyond it and on the sides there was a beautiful forest and groves. In a word, the position of the place was magnificent and such that I was different, as well as all that he had done, I should praise.

The layout of the brick two-story manor house with a basement and a mezzanine was typical for its time. On the top floor there was an enfilade of front oval-shaped rooms, and in the center - a round two-room hall . Two-tier towers were symmetrically placed on the sides of the stalls , in one of which there was a drying room, and in the other - the bell tower of the manor church ^[3] . The household services and the house church, consecrated in honor of the heavenly patron of the master, Michael the Archangel , were connected to the house by passages.

After listening to Bolotov’s advice on improving the estate, Krechetnikov answered with a laugh: “No, no, Andrei Timofeevich, henceforth you should not come here to me, otherwise you will lead me to endless chores and losses with your tempting offers” ^[2] .

The celibate general Krechetnikov did not leave direct heirs. During the invasion of the French , who stayed in Mikhailovsky in 1812, the manor house was not populated. In the same year, it was acquired by Maria Semenovna Bakhmeteva , the favorite of another Catherine’s figure, Count Orlov-Chesmensky . In 1826, the estate was inherited by her nephew S.V. Sheremetev . After his death in 1834, it passed to A.S. Musin-Pushkin , who planted plums and peaches of wonderful taste in greenhouses and greenhouses, which, according to a contemporary, told everyone “With a feeling of tenderness” ^[4] .

With the beginning of the Great Reforms, the estate was sold, but in 1870, Sergei Sheremetev returned it to the Sheremetev family, taking a loan for purchase. It was in this estate, and not in the grandfather Kuskovo or Ostankino , that his family spent every summer, went hunting and cheerfully celebrated birthday. On the sides of the main house, new buildings were built according to the project of N. V. Sultanov ^[5] ), into which S. D. Sheremetev moved his library and art gallery. The wife of the owner Ekaterina Pavlovna (granddaughter of the poet P. A. Vyazemsky ) for the creation of the Mikhailovsky Natural History Museum was elected an honorary member of the Russian Botanical Society .

“ Since 1870, Mikhailovsky has served us as an expensive refuge, dear and memorable. The best years of life flowed here, and the young generation grew up and got on its feet , ”wrote the estate owner ^[4] . He carefully sorted the papers of the previous owners stored in the house, including the correspondence between Bakhmetyeva and Orlov-Chesmensky and his daughter, and published them in 2 volumes. The comic "secret chancellery" for sorting and correspondence of documents "was led by His Excellency General N. P. Barsukov . The actual census-taker was 16-year-old Dmitry Sheremetev , the full-time secretary was 10-year-old Pyotr, and the census tellers of the secret office in the secret basement were 15-year-old Pavel (the future recluse of the Naprudnaya tower of the Novodevichy Convent) and 13-year-old Anna ^[6] .

In 1918, the Sheremetev estate was nationalized and declared a museum of noble life . However, already in the 1920s. a rest house of the Society of Political Prisoners drove into graph interiors. The pavilion towers and the church were demolished. In the post-war period, a sanatorium of the Ministry of Coal Industry was located in Mikhailovsky. As a result, the 18th-century manor and ensemble is hidden from the modern buildings of OJSC Mikhailovskoye Resort passing along the Kaluga Highway .

Since 2004, the development of the adjacent territory (cottage complex "Count's estate") has been ongoing. At the same time, the main house was abandoned for a long time and stood without glass. Since 2007, attempts have been made to preserve this cultural monument of federal significance.

On a round platform behind the master’s house, eight paths of an English park converge into a forest. They descend to the Yazovka river, where with the help of a dam a large pond was built, through which a white-stone bridge was thrown. Marya Bakhmeteva sought to turn Mikhailovsky Park into one of the best in the Moscow Region. As in other similar parks, here once there was a stone arbor and an artificial grotto . After the October Revolution, the park went wild and overgrown, ponds are neglected.

At the end of the 19th century, Countess Ekaterina Sheremeteva, with the assistance of Professor F.V. Buchholz, established a small botanical garden in the garden : in one part of the garden where living material was collected in the summer, and in the other, flowerbeds with planted plants in families.

• Sheremetev S. D. Mikhailovskoye: [East. feature article]. - M .: Synod. typ., 1906. - 148 p.

• Archive of the Village of Mikhailovsky, Volume 1 (1898)
• Archive of the Village of Mikhailovsky, Volume 2 (unavailable link) (1902)
• Modern photos of interiors