Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The building history of the Assumption Church in the village of Shchuch'ye does not differ from the history of many rural churches. After the wooden Nikolsky church burnt down in 1778, the construction of a stone church began. First, in just one year, the refectory was built with the southern St. Nicholas chapel, and the temple dedicated to the feast of the Aspen was completed until 1790. Soon after the consecration of the refectory and the southern chapel, a bell tower was added to them from the west, and the northern side-chapel was made only after 1864, carefully repeating the decor of the old parts of the building. A low stone fence around the church with holy gates, covered with grass, appeared at the very end of the XVIII or the beginning of the XIX century. The composition of the Assumption Church differs from the Ostashkov buildings of this time. The type of the temple - the octagon on the double-high quadrangle, with a faceted apse and refectory with the southern side-chapel - remains within the traditions, and squat proportions and especially decoration are completely different from those that had to be seen before. The volumes of the church are pointedly massive, the decor is much simpler, there is not that bizarre "uzorochya", as in the church of the village of Rogozhy, strict straight lines prevail. The temple is crowned by a broad flattened head on a thin drum. Its forms resemble the head of a wooden church in the Shirkov Pogost of the end of the 17th century, and throughout the building many things survived from the massive heavy buildings of the previous century. Compared with the church bell tower seems elegant. It is possible that it was built by another artel of masons - very much like the bell tower of the Transfiguration Church in Ostashkov and the unchained bell tower of the Korsun Cathedral in Toropets. This resemblance to the latter is especially great when compared with the image of the Toropets Korsun Cathedral on the engraving of the last century, where the artist stylized several forms, omitting some details.

 

In addition to unusual proportions, we note the palpable inclination of the bell tower to the west and the fence that was preserved almost all along the perimeter.



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57° 22' 26.2452" N 33° 24' 25.614" E