Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin (Mountain Shield)

The constructed wooden church was consecrated on February 22, 1726, but in the first quarter of the XIX century it burned down. In this connection, on this place on May 21, 1830, a stone, one-story church was laid. In the beginning, it had two thrones: the first limit in the front part in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos was consecrated on June 10, 1837, and the second in the refectory in honor of the Saints of Equal-to-the-Apostles Tsar Constantine and Tsarina Elena was consecrated on July 14, 1834. In 1878, the second limit was abolished due to the tightness of the church in the winter and the passage for everyone to the Pokrovsky temple through the Ponomari doors of the chapel, which after that was connected to the main one and now forms one single room with nothing. The church was built in the middle of the village on a flat vast area, surrounded by a stone fence with marble pillars and an iron grate; in the fence at the beginning of the 20th century, fir trees grew in a circle. In the vicinity of the church, 250 meters from it, on Mount Fomina, at the beginning of the 20th century there was a stone chapel consecrated in honor of the Holy Prophet Elijah, in which a procession was held annually on July 20. The clergy at the church at the beginning of the 20th century consisted of a priest and a psalm-reader who lived in church houses ^[1] .

The use of materials during the construction of the Intercession Church demonstrates the influence of the distribution of the Highest Approved Church Facades album in the Russian provinces. Project completed by M.P. Malakhov in 1828-1829, suffered a series of changes: the scale of the building decreased due to the financial capabilities of the customer. The temple has risalites slightly protruding on the side facades under the gables along the axis of the central volume, a rectangular altar apse . A uniaxial composition of a plan of a church with a flat dome without its own drum . Malakhov, using the motive of a large three-part arched window, managed to get rid of the characteristic neutral architecture of the late classicism . Having significantly reworked the high-altitude composition of the bell tower, Malakhov brought it to a new scale of the temple part. In the artistic depiction of decorative details, the creative style of M.P. Malakhov ^[2] .