The oldest surviving church in Sloboda Ukraine is St. Nicholas Church at the Sviatohirsk Lavra.

It was built between 1680 and 1682 on the summit of the chalk hill at the Sviatohirsk Assumption Hermitage (now the Sviatohirsk Lavra), partly using elements of the chalk cliff.

This is the Severian school of architecture, although many scholars classify the style as Cossack Baroque.

It has been suggested that the church was built by the same craftsmen from the Severia region who later constructed the Church of the Transfiguration in Izyum (1685) and the Cathedral of the Intercession in Kharkiv (1689).