Okhona

Okhona lies on the Meglinka at the mouth of the Kaleshevka, among the old church settlements of the Bezhetskaya pyatina of Novgorod. A sixteenth-century investigation into deserted villages records a visit to the Nikolsky pogost here in 1564. Its accounts also name churches of John the Baptist, Elijah and St Nicholas, and the priests and other people who served them. The local landowners had built some of these wooden churches on their estates, leaving a picture of several neighbouring centres of worship rather than a single isolated village.