Nikolochasovskaya Church

In the place where the temple later appeared, in the XVI - first half of the XVIII century there was an earthen rampart and a wall of a fortress with a gate. According to legend, next to the cautious wall stood the cells of Blessed Abram, and with her a small wooden chapel with the icon of St. Nicholas. According to the chapel, the church built here later was named.

The wooden chapel often suffered from fires, and in 1745 it was replaced by a stone one. In 1804, a stone church was erected in its place, initially a one-throne church, which was then rebuilt and expanded several times, and eventually the church acquired four thrones. The first was consecrated in the name of St. Nicholas , the second - in the name of Equal-to-the-Apostles Olga and the Monk Seraphim , the third - the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God , the fourth - the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God .

The temple had two domes - one on a round light drum, the other on an octal with uneven edges. In the center of the building there was a western porch, stairs leading along the facades led to it from two sides. The porch was crowned with a bell with seven bells, the largest of which weighed more than a ton.

The Nicholas Chasen church was not a parish church - it was part of a monastic monastery, attributed to the Bishop’s house and which had more than 10 cells in the late 19th century. The peculiarity of the Nicholas Church Church was that it was open to worshipers from early morning to 9 pm. At the temple there was a chapel above the well, known since ancient times. The well fell asleep during the destruction of the temple in the late 1930s.

The fate of St. John of Tula , who was buried on the outer porch of the temple, was closely connected with the temple. Subsequently, with the expansion of the temple, its burial was inside the church, in its southwestern part, and funeral services served almost continuously over the grave of the blessed. In the 1920s, believers, not wanting the burial of John to be desecrated, secretly transferred his remains to the All-Holy Cemetery.

In 1898, a parish school opened at the temple. Since the autumn of 1911, the All-City Sobriety Society was operating at the church. From August 1, 1912, a reading room library was operating under the society, which had two departments: religious-moral and anti-alcohol.

For the first time, they tried to close the church on October 25, 1921. The building was supposed to be transferred for the needs of the department of public education. Believers asked the local authorities not to close it. In November 1921, the Nikolochasovensky temple was examined by a commission from Moscow and ordered the church to be taken under protection "in view of its artistic significance and its holistically preserved style." In the spring of 1922, during a campaign to help the starving Volga , church utensils were seized from the Church of the Nicholas. Particularly valuable objects were transferred to the Tula Museum of Local History . Among them was a silver gilt star of the 1st half of the 17th century, an altar cross of the beginning of the 17th century, an altar gospel of 1681.

On August 1, 1922, the temple was given to the Renovationists , becoming their main temple in the city. According to the decision of the Presidium of the Moscow Oblast Executive Committee of February 16, 1930, the Church of the Nicholas and the Churches was on the list of Tula churches to be closed. It was planned to place the Central House of Pioneers in it, but the closing of the temple was delayed. In the summer of 1934, at the request of believers, some icons and vestments from the closed Assumption Cathedral were handed over to the Nikolochasovensky church.

As a result, the church was closed on the basis of a resolution of the Presidium of the Tula City Council on October 5, 1935, approved by a resolution of the Presidium of the Moscow Regional Executive Committee on November 26, 1935. On January 31, 1936, the church community moved to the All Saints Church , which the Renovationists declared their cathedral. At first, they wanted to place a children's library in the building of the Nikolochasovna Church. Then there were other projects: to demolish the former temple and build a cinema with a concert hall and a cafe in its place, but the lack of money prevented it. The temple was destroyed, and in its place over 20 years was a wasteland overgrown with weeds and fenced. In the early 1960s, a five-story residential building was built here.

• Lozinsky R.R. Pages of the past.
• Nikolochasovskaya church on the site vidania.ru