St. Nicholas's female metochion

St. Nicholas's female metochion stands in the western part of the town of Putyvl in the Sumy region³; it is a monastic community of the Konotop eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that belongs to the Molchensky Caves women's monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the same town¹.

The church that houses the metochion - the church of St Nicholas of Velykoritsk - was built in 1735-1737² at the expense of wealthy Putyvl Cossacks³, and in 1770 a bell tower was added to it from the west².

The church has two tiers: the lower, warm tier holds the church of St Nicholas of Velykoritsk, and the upper, cold tier holds the church of the Presentation of the Mother of God^{2, 3}.

According to the Ukrainian architect V. V. Vecherskyi, the church combines the best traditions of Ukrainian Baroque with early Classicism and is "an outstanding monument of the late stage of the development of the Ukrainian Renaissance style"³.

The church's plan reflects the tradition of wooden church building: it is single-domed and tripartite, boat-shaped, since the bell tower, narthex, nave and altar are arranged in sequence, and the square-plan nave is topped by an octagonal tented roof with three setbacks³.

The windows of the first tier are decorated with elaborate frames bearing figured broken pediments, while the windows of the second tier, set above human eye level, were left unadorned. The church's interior was once decorated with wall painting on wet plaster, which is now almost entirely lost³.

For decades the church was called the "Cossack" church, because of a mistaken identification of its name by the well-known Ukrainian architect Hryhorii Lohvyn; the reserve on whose territory the church stands uses the corrected name - St Nicholas of Velykoritsk³.

The church has the status of an architectural monument of national significance, protection number 620/0⁴. It is active today: services in it are conducted by priests of the Molchensky monastery³.