The first stone church in the monastery was built on the site of the old wooden St. Nicholas church with an altar in honor of St. George the Victorious. The initiator of the construction was the Rylsk merchant Prokofy Gerasimovich Shelekhov, who in 1731 signed contracts with craftsmen from Moscow and Galicia for the production of quality bricks, but did not live to see the start of the work. In 1733, his son, Ivan Prokofyevich Shelekhov, continued the project, receiving permission from Empress Anna Ioannovna. The church was built quickly, but was not consecrated for a long time, possibly due to a lack of funds. There is another version proposed by local historian N. Senatorov, according to which a rivalry arose between the Shelekhov merchants and the monastery's abbot Matfei, who came from the noble Lukashev family, for the right to be the main benefactors of the monastery. In 1747, the abbot's sister, Anna Ivanovna Zabelina, built the Trinity church in the monastery, and in 1753, with donations from other relatives and Abbot Matfei, the St. Nicholas Cathedral was quickly erected. The construction of the new church was completed by Semyon Ivanovich Shelekhov, who paid for the repairs and finishing work. In 1783, the church was issued an antimins and was consecrated in honor of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. During the Soviet years, the Exaltation church suffered greatly: after the war, a stone-crushing workshop was placed inside it, and a wall was knocked out. Currently, external finishing works are being completed.