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The territory where the Ploschansky Monastery is located used to belong to the diocese of Orel. It has witnessed all sorts of events influencing the formation and further development of the young Russian state. Even today one can't but sense the atmosphere of ancient Rus here. It looks as if in a moment clouds of dust would rise above the vast lands, the armour of warriors would sparkle, banners would fly in the air and the prince's cavalry would gallop past.
The nearby town of Sevsk and its vicinity were rather late to adopt Christianity. It was not before the 12th century that the holy monk Kuksha brought here the Christian faith. Later these lands were devastated by Batu. They were often invaded by Moscow princes. In the 13th century they became part of the Chernigov principality. Lying on the border with Lithuania Sevsk saw the first False Dmitry who was defeated here by Boris Godunov and the second False Dmitry who presented the town to his father-in-law Yury Mniszek.
While princes and boyars were fighting for the Russian lands with Tartars and Lithuania, deep in the dense forests, unseen by the world, in complete solitude, hermits led severe ascetic life praying for everyone. According to tradition, a hermitage has been on the site from time immemorial. This must be true, as the place is not easy to reach and could served as a refuge for monks in the time of troubles.
A booklet published in 1855 describes the monastery in the following words: "It has neither majestic structures nor great treasures. It doesn't

strike the visitor by the wildness or grandeur of the scenery. Everything here is very simple, modest and attractive because of this… Located far from any settlement and separated from the world by great forests the hermitage is ideal for monastic life."
Destroyed by the Poles, the monastery started to be restored in 1613. Hegumen Serapion recalled that the oldest monk Ephraim had told that "there were forests all round the monastery standing atop a hill. There was a spring, called Ploschansky well, that gave its name to the hermitage. At the beginning three monks lived here in an earth-house, one of them being hieromonk Procopius." Procopius, a Greek by birth, came here from the Kiev Caves Monastery. Probably, he and two other monks who settled with him knew that a hermitage had existed on the site before and had been destroyed by the Poles.
Procopius went to Moscow to Tsar Mikhail Romanov and Patriarch Philaretus to ask for their permission and blessing to revive the monastery which he was granted.
For his zeal and diligence he was given two icons -- one of the Saviour and the other, Kazan icon of the Mother of God whose miracle-working copy is to be found in the monastery today. That was the beginning of the Ploschansky Hermitage's revival. Since then the monastery has seen periods both of rise and fall.
In 1709 the decayed wooden Church of the Kazan Icon was completely reconstructed. The new stone Kazan Cathedral was consecrated in 1749, with a side chapel of St Nicholas consecrated earlier, in 1746. The Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God was put up in 1754, the gateway Church of All Saints in 1783 and the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in 1815. The wooden refectory was replaced by a stone one which also housed a kitchen, bakery and a few cell-rooms. The monastery was surrounded with wooden walls. It had a good library constantly enriched with new acquisitions - service books, writings on theology, ascetics and Christian morals. Such enlightened elders as Leonid and Macarius of Optina, Vasily (Kishkin), Athanasius (Zakharov) and Ignatius Brianchaninov lived in the Ploschansky Hermitage at different times. The last among them was Herman, celebrated for his wisdom, clairvoyance and martyrdom, who dwelled here in the early 20th century. One of the springs in the monastery territory bears his name.
After the revolution a bolshevik community "Pchela" (Bee) took the lands of the monastery that was closed in 1921, yet services were held here until 1924.
In 1932 thirty Ploschansky monks who had been hiding from the persecutors in the neighbourhood were arrested by the GPU, most of them perished in Stalin's camps. The imposing Kazan Cathedral was destroyed completely, so were the gateway Church of All Saints and modest Church of the Intercession. After the monastery's closure one of the monks saved the miracle-working Kazan icon of the Theotokos. He bequeathed it to the Ploschansky Hermitage which he believed would be restored in future.