Before the approval of the first urban planning plan for Kursk in 1782, settlements and villages were chaotically located around the old fortress of the city, almost each with its own church.

With the approval of the plan, places for city cemeteries were designated outside the city, beyond the Moscow and Kherson gates. However, burials at the new cemeteries did not begin immediately. The provincial land surveyor I.F. Bashilov reported this and asked local authorities to require Kursk priests and church benefactors to conduct burials at the new cemeteries. Since there were no cemetery churches in Kursk, their construction became necessary for conducting funerals.

In 1786, a wooden church in honor of the Dormition of the Mother of God was built at the Northern Cemetery of Kursk, which burned down in 1846. In the same year, a new stone church with an altar in honor of St. Nikita the Great Martyr was laid and built in its place, funded by merchants. Burials at this cemetery began long before the church was built, as evidenced by old graves and archival data.

Church buildings around the temple appeared later, when settlements approached the church and the need for a parish school arose. A one-story building was constructed for the school, while a two-story corner building at the intersection of streets (now K. Marx Street and Krasny Oktyabr) served as housing for clergy before the revolution. During the Soviet era, only the bells and crosses were removed from the church, and it was used as a warehouse.

The church was opened in 1942 during the war and remained one of the six active churches in Kursk, never closing. Since there were three churches in Kursk in honor of the Dormition, this cemetery church began to be referred to by the altar in honor of St. Nikita the Great Martyr.