Church of St. Basil the Great, Cherche

TheChurch of St. Basil the Great is a church in the village of Cherche, Rohatyn district, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine, an architectural monument of national importance.

The existence of the church in the village was first recorded in the lustration of the Rus' Voivodeship in 1564-1565. It is not known when the first building was erected. From a district record on the "Keys of Reasoning" by Joanikii Haliatowski in 1653, it is known that in 1708 there was a church of St. Basil the Great in the village. In 1733, according to an inscription on the doorposts of the southern door to the nunnery of the old village church, another church was built.

Interestingly, the villagers have called this church St. Paraskeva from generation to generation...

According to the act of visitation of 1760 by Fr. Mykola Shadurskyi, the church was blessed by the dean of Rohatyn, Fr. Stefan Demkovych. In the early twentieth century, a storm destroyed the central dome, which was covered with a temporary pyramidal tent. The restoration of the original top of the nave was carried out in 1970.

The church is located on the outskirts of the village, called Staryi Kut, on a low hill. It is a wooden, three-story, three-carriage building built on a stone foundation. It consists of three rectangular log cabins located along the east-west axis. The wider nave is covered with a pyramidal tent roof with three folds, and the altar and the chancel are covered with the same roof with one fold. All the tops are crowned with cupolas. The church is encircled by a canopy supported by stepped protrusions of the log cabin crowns.

The preserved shingle roofing and the casing of the walls of the nave add to the picturesqueness of the church. The church is illuminated through small rectangular window openings in the eastern and southern walls of the altar, the northern and southern walls of the nave, and the western wall of the Babynets. The entrance to the church is located in the southern wall of the narthex. In the interior, the nave space is open in height, repeating the shape of the exterior covering. Small narrow choirs are arranged at the western wall of the nave. The walls of the church are not painted. The four-tiered iconostasis of the XVIII century has been preserved, though with somewhat renewed iconography. Around the church, in the fenced area, there are old stone tombstones.