Arkhangelskoye

Arkhangelskoye lies in the open river country south of Tula, near the old approaches from the steppe. In the seventeenth century the Efremov district developed around a crossing of the Muravsky and Zelenkovsky routes, and a stockade was built there as part of Moscow’s frontier defences. A village called Arkhangelskoye, also known as Novosilskaya Slobodka, appears in a survey of 1619–1620 in the wider district. Fields and hay meadows later surrounded its wooden church.