Gerchikovo, Regional cultural heritage estate in Gerchiki, Russia.
Gerchikovo is a two-storey stone manor house with a mezzanine above an Ionic portico, built in the neoclassical style in the village of Gerchiki, 25 km south of Smolensk. A landscaped English park with artificial ponds surrounds it, and the ruined stone Trinity Church of 1808 stands nearby.
After the 1654 recapture of Smolensk from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tsar Alexis granted Gerchikovo to Scottish general Alexander Leslie, who had led the siege. In 1769–74 his descendant Ivan Leslie built a wooden Trinity church and manor buildings; around 1800 Pyotr Korbutovsky added a stone neoclassical house with a mezzanine. A stone church followed in 1808. Nationalised in 1918, the house served as a school and later a summer camp.
The estate's name comes from the village of Gerchiki. Its English-style landscape park with artificial ponds was laid out under the Korbutovsky family, and the manor later served as a school and, from 1986, a summer health camp. The writer Olga Forsh, sister-in-law of owner A. P. Meshchersky, stayed here in 1904–1906.
The estate lies in the village of Gerchiki, Smolensk district, about 25 km south of Smolensk. The restored manor house now operates as the Lafer hotel-estate, so access to the building depends on hotel guests and bookings. The park, partly overgrown, and the half-ruined 1808 stone church stand nearby.
The estate's last private owner before nationalisation was the sculptor Vladimir Beklemishev, who bought it in 1914. His predecessor, agronomist A. P. Meshchersky, ran the estate from 1904, and it was here that his son Nikita, later a linguist, was born. The writer Olga Forsh, the owner's sister-in-law, stayed at the estate between 1904 and 1906.
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