/ Chekhovo – Uderwangen

Uderwangen Church

Uderwangen Church

Today Uderwangen is called Chekhovo. The ruins of the church are near the house at 11 Shkolnaya Street. Coordinates of the site: 54.542864, 20.715370.

A parish church of the late 14th century. A plastered boulder building with buttresses. The windows have been widened; a porch on the north. On the east, a semicircular brick chancel added in the 16th century, with a sacristy. On the west, a brick tower with oblique corner buttresses. The tower is articulated by flat blind windows up to the frieze; it was built in the 15th–16th centuries, and its upper part was added in 1876. Inside the church, a flat ceiling painted in 1720. In the tower porch, a granite holy-water stoup (14th–15th centuries). Pulpit and altar of 1720. Organ of 1864. Two bells, of 1826 and 1878.


After 1945 the church survived, but the roof tiles were damaged. In 1969 the rafters rotted and the roof collapsed.

Ruins of Uderwangen Church


In 1985, on the orders of the collective farm chairman, demolition of the walls began using military vehicles. The bricks and stones were carted away for the farm's needs.

As of 2002 the tower with its brick spire, in a state of collapse, and fragments of the south wall with buttresses were still standing. The cemetery has practically vanished; only scattered fragments of gravestones can be found.



Photos on this page: Bildarchiv Ostpreußen, bildarchiv-ostpreussen.de


Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.