As the river Moskva was a highway for traffic between Suzdal, Vladimir and the Volga in the east, with Smolensk in the west and Kief in the south, the villages on its banks were important. The hill on which the Kremlin stands appeared to Yuri a point of vantage, and, as it was near the boundary of his territory, he there constructed a fortress and also built, or rebuilt or enlarged, the church which served for the inhabitants of the village of Kutchkovo hard by, and for those of other villages in the neighbourhood. All chroniclers agree that Yuri was the first to make a stronghold of the hill on the Moskva; most state further that he put to death Stephen Kutchko, but attribute this act to different causes. One story has it that Yuri wished to wed the wife of Stephen, so put him out of the way. As Yuri was but recently married to a kinswoman of Mstislaf, and so allied to the dominant house in Novgorod, this story is improbable. Another legend is to the effect that Kutchko, proud [Illustration: THE KREMLIN, FROM THE MOSKVA] of his village, refused due homage to his superior lord, and so suffered; and another that a village was taken from Kutchko to endow Andrew Bogoloobski, a son of Yuri's wedded to the daughter of a neighbouring boyard, whence the trouble. This last story is supported by the fact that later the sons of the killed Kutchko conspired against the enriched Andrew Bogoloobski; one was killed in attacking him, whilst the other succeeded in avenging a wrong done. Later historians are of opinion that Kutchko was an interloper from Black Russia or Podolia, trespassing on the territory of Yuri, who treated him as a usurper. It was in 1156 that Moscow became a town--just a cluster of dwellings on the Kremlin hill with a fence extending from the narrow stream Neglinnaia (now a covered sewer under the Alexander Gardens), from the Troitski Gate to the Moskva at, or near, the Tainitski Gate. The chief house was built on the spot now covered by the Orujnia Palata. A church, _Spass na Boru_, St Saviour of the Pines, is supposed to have existed where the church of that name, the oldest building in the Kremlin, now stands. Another church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, once existed nearer the foot of the hill, and its altar was removed to the chapel adjoining the Borovitski Gate when a later erection was demolished. Both of these churches were known as "In the Wood," and the name still preserves the memory of the thick forest that once covered the hill, and probably extended far and near on both sides of the Moskva.