St. Sergius Of Radonezh The Wonderworker Church

The Church of St.Sergius of Radonezh the Wonderworker is the main sight of Plavsk. Plavsk is known from 1540 as the village Sergievskoe, named after the church of St.Sergius of Radonezh the Wonderworker. It belonged to the dukes Gagarins from the 18-th century. It was a large trade village in the 19-th century. In the middle of the 18th century, the old wooden temple on the Krapivna burial ground felt into a complete disrepair and the Senate decree of 3 May 1767 allowed the dukes Gagarins to build a new church near the manor. The stone cold church in the name of venerable Sergius with wooden domes was laid near the entrance of the manor, from the side of trade square, in 1774. All the church utensils and relics are stored in the old church, including the antimension, which had been consecrated in the 17th century, were transferred during consecration of the new church. The church existed in this form up to 1860. The western part of the church and the bell tower were rebuilt in this and subsequent years. Thus, in the middle 1860s, a double side-alter, warm, refectory church with a bell-tower was constructed. And merchant B.F. Cheremushkin bought for this church the clock for 3.5 thousand rubles in Strasbourg in 1845 that had gone until 1938. Finally, after the refectory part of the church was arranged in 1868, they began to reconstruct the central main part, which was consecrated on 20 July 1876 year. Side-alters of refectory were consecrated in the name of Icon of Our Lady of Kazan and Nikolaos the Wonderworker. The entire reconstruction of the church of the middle of 19th century was made with the funds of the duke C. C. Gagarin, merchants of Cheremushkin and Sazonovof of Sergiev city, as well as with the money of the congregation. It is the form the church St.Sergius of Radonezh the Wonderworker passed to our day. His size, a dome-drum and the cupola diameter of the main building- all of that calls our attention and amazes us. They look verily capital. It is really rare to find in a city a church of such a great size. The whole point of the church is its main iconostasis. It is fine-cut of an excellent greyish, dim, white Uralian stone made by Sergiev craftsmen-stonemasons. It has the composition like at the iconostasis of the main church of Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. White-stone iconostasis is also a rarity. Perhaps, it is a solitary example on the whole territory of the Tula province. The church was closed in 1938. From that time the mechanism and working parts of the unique clock had been lost. The interior of the church was partly harmed - the iconostasis statyed untouched, but a great part of the icons of XVII-XVIII centuries were perished during the war. Nowadays the church service is held in the morning and at night every day, and during the holidays there are two Divine Liturgies. Two priests serve in the church. A priest regularly visits convicted people in a prison to provide them with a spiritual guidance. There is a Sunday school for children in the church.