Probably many people in our region know a village called Pustynka. It is located not far from the confluence of the Uvod and Klyazma rivers, between Malye Vsegodichi and Ilyino. Once there was a monastery there called Mikhailova Pustyn. According to legend, the founder of this monastery was the pious monk Mikhail, who lived in the 17th century. In 1764, the hermitage was abolished, and the monastery church became a parish church. The wooden church existed in the former Mikhailova Pustyn until the beginning of the 19th century.
On April 23, 1806, the peasants of the parish villages of Klyachina, Teterina, Vysokova, Dushilova and Panina decided at a meeting "that instead of the wooden church in the name of the Most Holy Mother of God of Vladimir, which had already begun to fall into disrepair, a stone church of the same name should be erected with the help of willing donors." By that time, the peasants had collected almost 1,200 rubles to begin the work, and on May 17, following a request from the local priest Dmitry Ivanov and the founder Grigory Yakovlev, they received a blessed charter for construction and permission to collect new donations from the Vladimir Spiritual Consistory.
The new church was built for more than three years and was completed in 1810. Initially, there was a heated side chapel "in the name of the Beheading of the Honorable Head of John the Baptist" at the main church. In 1862, another side chapel was added in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos. At the church, the parishioners built a stone house for the watchman, a chapel, and a brick fence around the church.
Previously, a busy road to Shuya passed through Mikhailova Pustyn, and since the 18th century, annual fairs were held there. Local peasants were engaged in the Ofensk trade on a grand scale and generously decorated their parish church. On patronal feast days, pilgrims from all over the Kovrov region came to the former Mikhailova Pustynka. In 1913, Metropolitan Makarii of Moscow and Kolomna visited the Vladimir Church of the Pustynka, and in 1918, Metropolitan Sergii of Vladimir and Shuya, the future His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', came there.
Translated by Google •
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