There are three interesting buildings opposite the southeast corner of the monastery. This was formerly the settlement of Skuchilikha which belonged to the mon­astery and was inhabited by various craftsmen includ­ing the monastery's masons and bricklayers. The settle­ment had two wooden churches built during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of which had a tent-shaped spire. They were replaced by the present stone churches which form the familiar pair - the large Church of Our Lady of Smolensk (1696-1706) restored by Olga Guseva in 1960 and the heated Church of St. Simeon (1749). The larger church has many features in common with other buildings we have seen belonging to the same period. The cornice of indented cut stone, balusters and small kokoshniks resembles that on the Church of the Emperor Constantine (1707) while the broad wall surfaces with three symmetrically placed windows remind one of the Church of the Ascension in the Monastery of St. Alexander (1695). Evidently the old system of commissioning a building by listing the fea­tures that were to be included in it and the models in which these were found was still in force in Suzdal at the end of the seventeenth century. In most cases the builders did not simply imitate these features, but made them an organic part of a new, original construction. The most important factor, however, was the lively in­terest shown by builders in the town's old buildings and those being erected by their colleagues. It is possible that the architect of the Church of Our Lady of Smolensk actually worked with Mamin, Gryaznov and Shmakov. At all events he seems to have made a careful study of their buildings. The church's north portal is executed with great freedom and plasticity making it look as though it has been moulded.

The church's bell-tower belongs to the period of Rus­sian Classical architecture at the end of the eighteenth century, and the small winter Church of St. Simeon has been badly disfigured by later alterations.