The exact date of the church's construction is not established, but researchers, based on structural and stylistic features, most often attribute it to the first half of the 18th century. It is known that in 1653, there were two wooden churches in the village of Verkhny Berezovets in the Soligalich district: the cold Nikolskaya with a chapel of Elijah the Prophet and the warm Pokrovskaya with a chapel of Paraskeva Friday. It is likely that the Nikolskaya church burned down at the end of the 17th century, and therefore a new wooden Ilinskaya church was built in the first half of the 18th century. In the second half of the 19th century, the church was rebuilt: a two-story porch with a staircase appeared instead of the entrance on the western side, and the roofs were covered with iron. In 1970, the church was moved to a museum and restored according to the project of architect V.S. Shaposhnikov from 1970 to 1977. During the restoration, the porch and iron roofs from the late 19th century were recreated. However, the serious restoration likely led to slight changes in the volumetric-planning composition of the temple, such as the 'slanted' placement of the upper octagon and the irregular shape of the apse.

The church, set on a basement, belongs to the tiered type of churches 'octagon on a square' and has a distinctly tiered structure. The square base supports two decreasing octagons in height, and above the 'bulging' roof rises a metal onion dome with a five-sided apse, almost square refectory, equal in width to the central square, and a narrower porch. This volumetric-planning composition is characteristic of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos from the village of Starye Klyuchishi in the Nizhny Novgorod region from 1731 and the Church of Nicholas the Wonderworker from the village of Vysoky Ostrov in the Novgorod region from 1757. The strongly protruding eaves of the roof, resembling shelves, enrich the silhouette of the church. The square base of the temple and the refectory are hewn 'in the round' from logs, the apse and octagons 'in the paw' from edged logs, and the narthex 'in the paw' from sawn timber. The church windows are angled, with double windows on the southern and northern walls of the lower octagon. The only element of external decor is the carved cornice of the square base.

The main interest lies in the interior space of the cold church. The temple has a wooden ceiling that imitates a closed eight-section vault on trompes, installed during the restoration in the second half of the 19th century. The vault is covered with narrow strips of home-woven canvas and painted with scenes from the 'Passion of Christ.' In the center of the vault is a round icon depicting Christ the Almighty. The painting of the vault and the central tondo dates back to the last reconstruction of the church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The iconostasis is four-tiered, from the mid-19th century. Its central part is highlighted by vertically paired columns, on top of which are figures of those present at the Crucifixion. Below the icons of the local row were panels with biblical scenes painted on canvas, but they, like the icons of the festive row, have not survived. Individual inserts and additions of carving with ornamentation in the Art Nouveau style testify to the reassembly of the iconostasis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The painting and carving in the interior of the temple were restored by artists and carvers from the Kostroma special scientific restoration production workshop from 1983 to 1987. The 'sky' was glued to a plywood base to protect the canvases from deformation along the grooves of the lath sheathing of the vault.