Mass Media Overview
Pokrovskoe of the Bryanchaninovs. The Bryanchaninovs' estate. Vologodskaya Oblast
23.10.2023 15:47
https://shimanovskadm.ru/en/
Pokrovskoe is the family estate of the old noble family of the Bryanchaninovs, which originated from the boyar Mikhail Brenko, the squire of the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy.
In 1803, the Pokrovskoye estate was inherited from his ancestors by Alexander Semyonovich Bryanchaninov (1784 - 1875). Bryanchaninov served as a cornet in the Alexander Hussar Regiment. Was a chamber-page under the Emperor Pavel Petrovich. He had a good education, excellent taste, was fond of hunting. He was married to the heiress of another branch of the Brianchaninovs, Sophia Afanasyevna. Having married, Bryanchaninov decides to build an estate for his future family in Pokrovskoye. The location was not chosen by chance. There was already a churchyard in the village, where representatives of the Brianchaninov family were buried.
The main house of the estate was built in 1809-1810 according to the project of the local self-taught architect Alexander Sapozhnikov. The proportions of the building are so precise and elegant that, despite the documented authorship, some experts suggest that the house could have been designed by a certain metropolitan architect close to the school of Matvey Kazakov or Nikolai Lvov.
In general, the architectural and landscape gardening complex of the Bryanchaninovs' estate has survived to this day in its historical form. The layout of the estate is typical for the era of classicism. The two-storey main house with an attic is connected by one-storey galleries with two wings.
In the attic there were two rooms for the owners, the second floor was reserved for children's rooms, and on the first floor there were a living room, a hall, an office, guest rooms and a dining room. The outbuildings housed utility rooms and servants' rooms.
The facade of the house is richly decorated with stucco decoration in the form of helmets, banners, lances, horse heads. All these attributes of military glory - a tribute to the military merits of the Brianchaninovs, have come down to our days in original form... As for the interior of the house, only a wooden twisted staircase to the second floor has survived without alterations to this day.
The area of the estate was 1800 acres. In addition to the main house, the manor complex included a number of buildings.
To the east of the house is the brick Church of the Intercession Holy Mother of God, built in 1811 next to the family necropolis. In addition, there were utility rooms on the territory of the estate.
Of these, the cellar (2nd half of the 19th century) and stables (2nd half of the 19th century) have survived to this day. Also today you can see the human and the priest's house (privately owned).
The estate was once famous for its kennel for 200 dogs and a menagerie in case of hunting, with hares, foxes and even bears.
The extensive garden adjacent to the house is an example of landscape art of the 19th century. It was divided into three terraces.
The upper terrace consists of 8 linden alleys, planted in the form of a star, and the grounds are decorated with flower beds.
The second terrace is mostly planted with larch and fir. The border between the terraces is a line of fruit trees. In the center of the terrace there are earthen ramparts of the labyrinth; not far from it there was a grotto made of cobblestones.
The lower terrace of the park is an open area. Garden plants grew here - berries, fruits and vegetables. There was also a fountain that gave coolness.
At the end of the garden there were greenhouses for flowers, fruits and vegetables.
The main alley of the park starts from the parterre flower bed at the southern facade of the main house and stretches across the entire park, resting on a large oval pond with a bridge.
The modern park of the estate reproduces the park of the Bryanchaninovs only partially, many of its elements have been lost.
The family of Alexander Semenovich and Sofia Afanasyevna Bryanchaninov had nine children. The most famous of them is Dmitry Alexandrovich Bryanchaninov.
Since childhood, Dmitry was fascinated by the search for the meaning of life, manifestations of Divine providence. His father sent him to study at the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg, during which Dmitry decided to become a monk. He graduated from college with the rank of lieutenant in 1826, but the next year he was dismissed from service due to illness and entered the Alexander-Svirsky monastery in the Olonets province, then was in other monasteries. In 1831 he tonsured into monasticism with the name in honor of Saint Ignatius the God-bearer. Then he became a hieromonk and was appointed abbot of the Lopotov Pelypem monastery. Since 1833, Ignatius became abbot of the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg in the rank of archimandrite. In 1857 he was already Bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea.
In 1861, upon petition, he was dismissed and settled in the Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery of the Kostroma diocese.
Father Ignatius's circle of acquaintances included many cultural figures of that time: Pushkin, Krylov, Batyushkov, Glinka, Gogol, Bryullov, Admiral Nakhimov and others.
In 1988, Father Ignatius Brianchaninov was canonized. After the canonization, Pokrovskoye was visited by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy, about which a memorial tablet has been preserved.
The last owners of the estate before the revolution were Vladimir and Sophia Bryanchaninov. After warning the peasants about the threat of arrest, they hastily left Russia. Having left almost all their property, in 1918 they emigrated through the Crimea to Czechoslovakia. Later, their children leave for Australia in 1945.
In 1820 the estate was rebuilt by the famous Moscow architect A.S.Kutepov. And in 1924, the Oktyabrskiye Vskhody sanatorium was opened here, which existed until the 90s. During this period, the building was rebuilt several times. A warehouse was set up in the Intercession Church. Nevertheless, thanks to the management of the sanatorium, the estate as a whole was preserved in its historical form until 1960, when it was taken under state protection. After the closure of the sanatorium, the manor complex quickly fell into decay.
In 1997, based on the surviving drawings of A. Sapozhnikov, sketches of the building, landscape plans, the Bryanchaninov family archives, as well as photographs and descriptions made by the famous art critic Georgy Lukomsky, a project for the restoration of the estate was developed.
By 2009, the estate was restored.