Vokhna

Vokhna lies where the river of that name approaches the Klyazma, east of Moscow. The district is named in the will of Grand Prince Ivan Kalita, dated to 1339, among his hereditary possessions. Its forests and streams supported beaver hunting, an occupation associated with the grand prince’s people in the Vokhna lands.

The estate passed between members of the princely family. In his will of 1504 Ivan III left Vokhna to his son Andrey of Staritsa, and it later came to Andrey’s son Vladimir. By the late sixteenth century it belonged to the Trinity-St Sergius monastery. Sources of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries also call the village Pavlovo, while the older name Vokhna continued to be used for the locality and its river.