In July 1715, by the decree of Peter I, a gunpowder factory was established on the banks of the Okhta and Luppa rivers, which gave its name to the cemetery opened at the Church of Elijah the Prophet, consecrated in 1722. Porokhovskoye Cemetery is not among the most famous and prestigious, but it has a long history and is quite picturesque. It is located on the northeastern outskirts of Saint Petersburg, in an area with a hilly terrain unusual for our flat city. It is squeezed between Krasina Street and Ryabovsky Highway, with its southern boundary being the winding Lubbya (Luppa) River, a left tributary of the Okhta. The cemetery covers about 9 hectares.

The fate of Porokhovskoye Cemetery is closely linked to the history of the Okhta Gunpowder Factory, founded in 1715. From this, as one can easily guess, come both its name and the professional affiliation of a significant portion of the people buried there. But few know that the current Porokhovskoye Cemetery is the third of its kind. The first, opened in the early 1720s, was located within the fence of the first (wooden) Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah, built at the request of the factory workers. For the cemetery and the buildings for the clergy, the Holy Governing Synod then ordered to "measure out land from the church in all directions by forty sazhen" (an old Russian unit of length).

Later, it became clear that for the growing population of Porokhovye, especially considering frequent emergencies—with human casualties!—at this extremely dangerous production site, this cemetery was insufficient. In the late 1770s, land was allocated near the factory dam (close to modern Kommuny Street) for the second Porokhovskoye Cemetery. In 1779 (according to other sources, in 1781), a wooden church in the name of Saint George the Victorious was consecrated on the new cemetery grounds. It was this church that gave its name to the Georgievsky Gate, one of the factory’s entrances. Meanwhile, the old cemetery was not liquidated. It existed alongside the second Elijah Church (wooden, on a stone foundation), consecrated in 1743, and the third (stone), built between 1781 and 1785. Moreover, in special cases, burials were still made there. Incidentally, there are reports that in the 1930s, near the church, one could still see gravestones from the 18th century.

The fate of the second Porokhovskoye Cemetery turned out quite differently. The Georgievskaya Church was severely damaged by an explosion that occurred at the Okhta Gunpowder Factory on April 15, 1803. The iconostasis and church utensils were moved to the Elijah Church for safekeeping. Eight years later, in 1811, the cemetery church of Saint George the Victorious was dismantled. In 1816, a military settlement was established at the factory. During its organization, the lands belonging to the enterprise were redistributed. According to the plan, the plot of the second cemetery was to be used for the construction of barracks, and as a result, the "place of keeping ashes," as it was then called, was "erased."

Only on the third attempt, in the early 1820s, did Porokhovskoye Cemetery take its current location, moving even further northeast, near the confluence of the Gorely Brook and the Lubbya River. By 1824, it already accounted for more than two desyatinas of land (an old Russian unit of area). Initially, the cemetery was in a lowland and was periodically flooded, which later led to burials being made on the other, higher bank of the Gorely Brook. On maps from the 1840s, these parts, which make up the current cemetery, are marked as "old" and "new."

The main religious structure of Porokhovskoye Cemetery was the stone chapel of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, built in 1832 or 1833 and attached to the Elijah Church. In 1911, it was rebuilt according to the design of military engineer Vladimir Yakovlevich Simonov, who was then the factory architect; the walls were laid from cobblestones on cement mortar. (In the early 1900s, Simonov was involved in the reconstruction of the main church of the Porokhovye.) In 1929, the cemetery’s Nikolskaya chapel was seized by the Renovationists and made their church. In 1938, it was closed, and the building was handed over to the "Funeral Business" trust. It has not survived to the present day. In 1979, an administrative building for the cemetery was constructed on this site.

In the 1880s, after a series of major explosions, it was decided to erect a common monument at Porokhovskoye Cemetery to those who died in explosions at the Okhta factory. In 1887, the residents of the gunpowder town announced a subscription to raise funds for this monument. In an official statement, the Okhta gunpowder workers said: "Wishing to honor the honest workers who died since 1858, we appeal to all kind people as comrades in misfortune with a humble request for donations and to serve at least once a year at the common fraternal grave of the victims of the inevitable providence of the Almighty Creator, who died a martyr’s death in the performance of their modest and hard duty... for a glorious cause, one glance at which conveys to our successors and posterity a constant remembrance and memory of the deceased."

To the significant sum collected by the factory workers, a so-called "mug collection" was added at the chapel standing on the Okhta dam. The monument project was developed by academician of architecture Robert Robertovich Marfeld, who was the factory architect from 1886 to 1888. (In 1889, this architect rebuilt the stone chapel of Saint Martyr Paraskeva (Friday), adjacent to the Elijah Church.) Fourteen genuine stone millstones for making gunpowder, raised from the bottom of the Okhta, were laid in the foundation of the monument. These millstones had spent almost a hundred years underwater: since 1791, they lay at the foot of the factory dam, protecting the riverbed from erosion. The majestic composition was crowned with a massive granite cross. The material for the monument was supplied by the workshop of marble and granite products of M. D. Shashkov, which operated at the Bolsheokhtinskoye Cemetery. The stonemasonry was done by master K. Novosyolov. The inscription on the monument, unveiled in 1890, reads: "Why do you fret in vain, O man! One hour and all pass away."

It is assumed that there were no ranks at Porokhovskoye Cemetery (possibly due to its small size). The most prestigious places were considered to be near the Nikolskaya chapel and along the Main Alley. People holding higher social positions were buried there. In the 1920s–1930s, the fee for a burial plot at Porokhovskoye Cemetery was one-forty-fifth of a monthly wage, which was three times cheaper than at Bolsheokhtinskoye.

Many prominent artillerymen and infantrymen rest at Porokhovskoye Cemetery, but mainly the masters and ordinary workers of the factory, as well as their family members. Wooden crosses were usually placed on the graves of the latter, which have been lost over time. The oldest surviving tombstone in the cemetery is the stele on the grave of Maria Osipovna Chigorina, who died in 1848, and her three children. She was the first wife of Ivan Ivanovich Chigorin, a master and later the head of the office of the Okhta Gunpowder Factory. His son from his second marriage, Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin, became a great chess player. In 1926, the outstanding scientist-ballistician and artillery systems designer Vasily Mikhailovich Trofimov, who rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the Russian Imperial Army, was buried at Porokhovskoye Cemetery.

Sources:

http://krasnakarta.ru/spot/id/24/porohovskoye

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porokhovskoye_Cemetery

https://pogostohta.ru/porohovskoe/