Vysokoye

Vysokoye stood on the Guslitsa at the crossing of roads from Moscow to Kasimov and from Kolomna to Vladimir. Its church of St George gave the village another name, Yegory Vysoky. Sixteenth-century records name the priest Ivan and others serving the church, a centre for the surrounding rural district.

Ivan IV granted Vysokoye to Moscow’s Chudov monastery in the 1560s. The village later became a market for the surrounding country, with grain brought from Kolomna and southern districts and goods including hops, leather and wooden vessels exchanged at fairs. In 1778 Catherine II made Vysokoye a district town under the name Yegoryevsk. The town stood at an advantageous crossing of roads, and the older name remained in descriptions of its origins.