The first architectural ensemble of the Pogost was created in 16 century by monks, going to Solovky. The Church was twice burnt to the ground, and twice it was rebuilt. In 1998 today’s cathedral celebrated its bicentenary. In the 1930s the Ilyinsky Pogost, having lost its priests and its parish for the most part, deserted for 60 long years. Not long ago, in 1991, its renaissance began.
We can find the description of the Parish in the travel notes of Kharuzin: “There are two churches in the Pogost – a new and an old one. The new one is painted white so, that it seems to be made of stone from afar. It represents a high cubical frame, domed with five cupolas. The old church, judging by the church notes, was built in 1752. It is a typical northern church - an oblong quadrangular frame with high standing windows, scaly cupolas. It is divided into two parts inside, in one of them old church things are kept, in the other one, although seldom, the divine services are taking place. There is only one old icon in the church – the representation of the Last Judgment (1786).”
The Ilyinsky Pogost, situated in the island of Malyi Kolgostrov, lasted out to our days, and nowadays is called Ilyinsky. It is decorated with a wooden Church of Elias the Prophet, built in 1798 in the place of a tumbledown hip church by local carpenters on the funds of the parish. The base project for the building was made by professional architects and approved by Olonetskaya consistory. In the middle of 19th century the Vasilievsky Side-chapel was made in the refectory and a cupola was put on the roof.
Firstly the church was connected with a standing near bell-tower by a covered gallery. At the beginning of the XXth century in the refectory of the church a warm Vasilievsky Side-chapel was made. In 1902 the outward of the church was changed. The icons of the basic ikonostasis and Vasilievsky Side-chapel and the icons of the “sky”for the most are still safe and are in the museum of Karelian Fine Arts and the National open-air museum “Kizhi”. The subscription icon “ The Elias Impassioned Escention” (XVII) is considered to be the masterpiece of the northern fine arts.
Another distinctive feature of the Ilyinsky Parish is a long fence around the church. Inside the fence there is an old cemetery with extant tombstones. The walls are not high, but the impressive gates and large cornices of the roofing make it look like an old fortress. Similar fences surrounded nearly all the northern cloisters. On the analogy of this monument the lost fence of the Kizhi Parish was reconstructed.
There were shops in the fence, where the peasants and trade people were trading on holidays and fair days. Probably, the holiday trade gave profit, because spacious storage facilities for trade people’s goods were made on the neighbour island of Kolgostrov.
