Starinsky Pogost is a unique and mysterious place. Even during the time of Ivan the Terrible, this churchyard was the center of a huge volost located to the south of Vladimir.
The architecture of the church building is quite remarkable. It is rare to see such a massive five-domed church in combination with impressive six-columned porticoes and numerous arches of the interior. Residents of the immediate vicinity call the churchyard church the "red church".
Heavy white stone slabs are firmly embedded in the walls both from the inside and from the outside. In shape, these stones resemble typical tombstones of past centuries. Most of the slabs have clearly legible inscriptions that date back to the 18th century. The tombstones in the walls of the church bear the names of the native Vladimir nobility: Ragozins, Yazykovs, Khonenyovs, Kolyshkins, Koptevs.
It is known that the current church building was built on the foundation of a previously existing stone church, the exact time of construction of which is unknown - somewhere during the reign of Peter the Great in the early 1700s. And that, in turn, was built on the site of a former temple - even during the time of Boris Godunov!
At the same time, it must be taken into account that some of the slabs have not survived to this day. Such a large number of crypts (about three dozen, if not more), except in the dungeon-crypt of the temple, simply could not fit anywhere. Such an example of mass burials of local nobility in the conditions of a rural temple is perhaps the only one in our region and in its own way is unique even on an all-Russian scale. Somewhere in the depths of the church of the Starinsky Pogost lie the family members of the Vladimir district leader of the nobility, collegiate councilor Alexander Afanasyevich Ragozin, who received Emperor Paul in Vladimir in 1798. Nearby are the Yazykovs, from among whom came the Vladimir vice-governor, the provincial leader of the nobility and two Vladimir police masters. Most of the slabs bear the names of the noble Kolyshkins. Among them is Colonel of the Admiralty Collegium Ivan Andreyanovich Kolyshkin, who stood at the birth of the Russian navy. The tomb stone of Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Kolyshkin. This guards officer is repeatedly mentioned in the personal diaries of Empress Catherine II. He took an active part in the palace coup of 1762, which elevated Catherine the Great to the throne. Kolyshkin appears in many memoirs of that time, in the works of leading historians, and is even the hero of historical novels dedicated to the events of the mid-18th century.
Translated by Google •
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