Residents of the village of Elshanka in the Ulyanovsk region are engaged in the restoration of the Kazan Mother of God Church, built between 1824 and 1827 with funds from the landowners Topornins, Elizabeth Petrovna, and Fyodor Stepanovich. This three-altar church, dedicated to the Kazan Mother of God, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and the righteous Zacharias and Elizabeth, is a rare example of a late classicism cult building in the province. The church is recognized as a cultural heritage site and a monument of history and culture.

The well-known Ulyanovsk local historian Alexey Sytyn showed interest in the history of this church. He suggested that the project might have been created by one of the provincial architects, possibly the Simbirsk provincial architect Mikhail Matveevich Rushko. The construction of the stone church in Lower Elshanka, as the southern part of the village was previously called, was carried out with funds from local landowners, the Topornins. This family, starting from the 17th century, actively participated in the development of uninhabited lands in the Middle Volga region.

In the 19th century, among the Simbirsk Topornins, the descendants of Captain Stepan Egorovich Topornin stood out, who built the stone Nikolayevsky church in the family estate, the village of Topornino, in 1790. One of his sons, Fyodor Stepanovich Topornin, became the owner of the former estate of the Surovtsevs in the village of Elshanka in the first quarter of the 19th century. Under the Topornins, including Fyodor Stepanovich, his wife Elizabeth Petrovna, and their son Nikolai Fyodorovich, a new manor house, a stone church, a cloth factory, a horse breeding farm, and several mills appeared in Elshanka. In 1875, the lands near Elshanka, like many other estates, passed to Alexandra Nikolaevna Topornina, who soon married Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Obolensky and remained the owner of the estate until 1918.

The village of Elshanka, almost contemporaneous with Simbirsk, was first mentioned in 1678. Its founder was the nobleman Faddey Grigoryevich Surovtsev, and initially, the village was called the village of Surovchikha. Later, it was named Elshanka after the Elkhovo spring located on the outskirts of the village.

The architectural appearance of the church resembles other structures in the Simbirsk province of that era. The four-tiered bell tower gave it particular expressiveness and, despite the destruction, still impresses with its monumentality and proportionality. The manor house and the church, built in the same style, formed a unified architectural ensemble, which is one of the interesting estate complexes of the classicism era in the region.