Jäla kyrka

The core of the church is medieval, with nave walls surviving from the 1100s. The present appearance largely dates from 1787, when a new three-sided chancel was added on the old foundations, followed by a sacristy in 1791. Only the ancient nave walls and the sacristy door, thought to date from the 1300s, survive from the earlier building. The tower was raised in 1824, possibly replacing an earlier medieval one, and a substantial renovation took place in 1926 under Ragnar Hjorth, when the chancel windows were bricked up to accommodate a new neoclassical altarpiece.

The church's most striking treasure is its font, carved from sandstone in the 1100s by a sculptor known only as the 'Jäla Master', decorated with eight arcaded panels and considered the church's oldest object. Above it hangs a hovering dove made by the artist Eva Spångberg, one of several furnishings donated by a local church needlework circle, alongside the altarpiece and crucifix.

A notable but now absent object associated with the church is a richly worked gilt-copper reliquary shrine from the late 1100s, resting on bronze lion-paw feet, whose inscriptions refer to relics said to include those of John the Baptist. Sources differ on some details of its history and associations, and it is no longer kept at the church, now held at a regional museum. Local tradition has also linked such a shrine to Saint Bridget, though accounts of its origin and exact contents vary.

The tower holds two bells, though the church once had three. The oldest, of late medieval type, is no longer at the church, having been moved to a national historical museum in the early twentieth century. The larger of the two remaining bells was cast in 1545, cracked during bell-ringing linked to the 1914 mobilisation, and was recast in 1917, when a new smaller bell was also added. Its inscription, in Gothic lettering, references King Gustav and a bishop of the time.

A small pipe organ from 1985 stands in the west gallery, built as a close copy of an older case still visible in the tower room behind it. Three of the church's chandeliers date from the 1700s, while the pulpit and gallery front are nineteenth-century additions.