Description of the attraction
Nikolskaya Church is located at the entrance to the village of Verkhniy Most. In the old days, this village was especially large, and reached its highest economic development at the end of the 18th century. It is assumed that the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was built in the 16th century. The first mention of it dates back to 1684. According to legend, originally the church was single-altar, and the temple bell tower stood separately from the church on pillars made of stone. The only chapel consecrated in the name of the Mother of God was built at the very beginning of the 18th century by a noble parishioner named Bekleshov. During 1865 the dilapidated iconostasis and the canopy were restored.
During 1882-1883, restoration work was carried out regarding the reconstruction of the temple after a severe fire, while all internal damage was completely eliminated. In 1903 the cramped and dilapidated side-chapel was dismantled, and in the course of 1907-1908 a warm stone side-chapel was built at the expense of the parishioners, consecrated in the name of the Mother of God "The Sign".
The planning structure of the church changed significantly at the end of the 18th century, although it remained the same traditional for all Pskov temple buildings, represented by the type of quadrangles, and to the western part of it there is a bell tower and a narthex. The volumetric-spatial composition of the St. Nicholas Church is a parallelepiped slightly elongated to the south side, represented by a double-height chapel built up to the very top of the quadrangle, which unites the entire complex and the church looks fully united. The vertical guide of the pillar-shaped bell tower has not been replaced by a light drum related to the quadrangle, which, after the volume was expanded towards the southern part, became quite small for the purpose of thinning the horizontal composition.
The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is a three-apse, four-pillar church with defining structures represented by vaults without supporting arches. In this case, the drum is located on the ceiling vaults of the quadrangle itself. The pillars located on the west side have a circular cross-section as high as a person's height. In one of the corners of the choir there is a side tent or Sergeevskaya church. There is a doorway in the south wall and leads to the south aisle. A doorway is located in the north wall, above which a window opening is provided. The existing openings of the altar and the northern wall have been hewn, and in the altar only one window has been hewn.
The decorative design of the facades of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker has a characteristic and traditional look for the largest number of religious buildings in medieval Pskov. Each of the existing facades has a division in the form of four blades into several parts, and the blades are interconnected by means of two-blade creeping small arches. On the façade facing the north, there are two icons in a niche. The half-cylinder of the altar apse is decorated with bolsters and a belt, which consists of curbs and a runner. On both sides of the door, on the western façade, there are semicircular pillars.
The drum is decorated in the form of a traditional geometric ornament; the wedding of the drum is in the form of an arcature belt. Immediately above the windows there are curbs made in the form of front-line soldiers. The drum is covered with galvanized sheet metal along the perimeter of the vault. The church head has a helmet-shaped fracture. The base of the metal four-pointed cross is decorated with a small drum.
In 1880, a school at the church was opened with the active work of the priest Luchansky, in which 57 children were trained. In October 1910, at a distance of three versts from the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, a zemstvo Ladovskaya school appeared, in which 28 students studied. During 1911-1917, Nazaretsky Vasily Vasilyevich was a church priest, soon after which he was sentenced to death.
To date, all the church extensions have come down to us almost unchanged, with the exception of the bell tower, which was dismantled to the lower tier. Not so long ago, the head of the drum of the quadrangle was covered with roofing iron, after which it was replaced with a roof with a wooden cornice.
