Did you know that thanks to the preserved documents, we can announce today the names of wood suppliers that helped Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra construct the buildings in its territory?

Thus, oak and pine logs were often transported to Lavra from Radomyshl and Ovruch. To make the deal real, special contracts were signed with suppliers. The original versions of those contracts were then kept in the archives of the Lavra’s Household department. Among the supplies that helped the Monastery build its constructions in the 2^nd half of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries there were: Major Sophia Synelnykova, Jews Chemashevych, Azim Gorolovsky, Yesej Feldman, Danylo and Mordukh Weisberg, Avram Linchytsky; Kyiv burghers, such as Lapin; merchants Joseph Kvyatkovsky, Ivan Voloshyn, Reisar and Kostianov; landowners Pavsha and Bykovsky; Governor’s Secretary Frans Rek, etc. The latter, by the way, has once asked the Monastery to give him back the cart, which he previously presented to Lavra, to organize a “wedding train” for his daughter. He thanked Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra for the services provided. However, his relationship with the Monastery was not always successful. Court documents, preserved in the archives, show that Lavra repeatedly accused Frans Rek of nonobservance of the terms of the contract. His supplies of wood, necessary to repair the Bell Tower, were not always sufficient. In those cases the Monastery demanded material compensation.

Within the records, one can also find an interesting contract between St. Basil’s Convent (Ovruch Town) and Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra for the supply of oak logs to Kyiv. To evaluate the quality of offered wood, and negotiate with its potential suppliers, Lavra sent novices. One of them, Stepan Ternaviot, who came from the well-known Kyiv bourgeois family of Greek origin, traveled to Ovruch and Radomyshl in the 1820^s.

Caption to the illustration:

1. Wood alloy. Photo made in the 1st half of the 20^th century.

Hanna Filipova