Kesova Gora

Kesova Gora lies on the Kashinka River between Kashin and Bezhetsk. Known in medieval records as Kiasova Gora, it belonged to the Gorodets district of Bezhetsky Verkh and later to Kashin district, where it served as the centre of Kesovo volost. The village was a hereditary estate of the Prozorovsky princes. By the eighteenth century it was a trading centre holding four fairs a year; a record for 1783 counted 300 households and 770 souls.

The rebuilding of St Nicholas's Church gives a more intimate view of late eighteenth-century life. After the earlier church burned, an old wooden church was brought from Demshino to provide a temporary place of worship, receiving episcopal approval in 1779. Construction of a stone replacement continued, and its principal altar was consecrated on 1 October 1786. The sequence of fire, moving an existing timber building and erecting a new stone church shows how the community maintained worship while undertaking a larger rebuilding project.