Cherepoves

Cherepoves grew near the meeting of the Yagorba and Sheksna, on a water route between White Lake and the Volga. Its early history is tied to the Resurrection Monastery, founded in the late fourteenth century by the monks Feodosy and Afanasy. A settlement developed around the monastery, whose church and lands gave the community a centre.

The monastery was abolished during Catherine II's secularisation of church estates. Its surviving church, completed in the 1750s, became the town cathedral when Cherepovets received town status in 1777. The new town's place on the Sheksna was important to plans for improving water communications. In 1810 the Mariinsky water system opened a navigable connection between the Volga basin and the Baltic, strengthening the role of the river route on which Cherepovets stood.