Majer Kupča

In the 18th century, a farm called Kupča was established on the Svätokríž estate, which belonged to the Bishop of Banská Bystrica. Bishop Štefan Moyses strived to bring education and faith and improve the lives of the people. He personally got involved in this effort and even consecrated the newly built St. Stephen's Church himself. The church had one bell, which was cast by the bell founder Vojtech Littman, also at the expense of Bishop Moyses. In the first half of the 19th century, Kupča became the main center of agricultural activity and livestock production. The estate covered 652.2 hectares. For the needs of the estate, a brickworks was built on the farm, which later supplied bricks not only to the estate and the manor house but also to the town of Sv. Kríž and its surroundings.

After the collectivization in the 1950s and 1960s, farmers from Kupča gradually moved to surrounding villages. Materials from abandoned buildings began to be stolen. After 1989, another decline began—some of the fields were no longer farmed, and the land began to be inhabited by homeless people. The church building also started to decay. In 2010, the land in Kupča was sold to a private owner. The new owner built a gate at the beginning of the field road leading to Kupča and prohibited entry onto the property. A route for the R2 highway connector was also proposed for this area. In 2012, the construction of a section of the R2 expressway – the Žiar nad Hronom bypass – began. This section connected to local roads near the field road from Kupča. Heavy machinery used for construction was parked in Kupča, causing the number of cars passing by the church to increase. This led to damage to the church's structure.

In 2014, the town of Žiar nad Hronom decided to establish a commission to propose monuments in the town and its surroundings for protection. However, the church in Kupča was not included among these monuments. Members of the Civil Association Endangered Churches included it in the list of 200 endangered churches in Slovakia. People from the organization ZZ Castrum Susol also tried to get the church listed as a heritage site. Students from the Milan Rúfus Gymnasium were interested in how to drain the area around the church, and the church tried to exchange land to regain control of the church. Despite all these efforts, the landowner, on which the church stood, decided to demolish it. He did not report the demolition work. The public learned about the church's destruction only from a construction worker who cared. In 2015, St. Stephen's Church was demolished, and thus the memorial to the work of Štefan Moyses in Sv. Kríž nad Hronom was leveled to the ground.