Snårestads kyrka

The present building replaced a Romanesque church dating from the early 1200s, which had fallen into disrepair and was abandoned in 1867, the same year the new Marsvinsholms kyrka came into use. Sources note that demolition of the old church was even begun at one point, before being halted, and the ruin remained on the site for decades.

The medieval church had a tall nave, a round main portal, and vaulted ceilings decorated with wall paintings dated to 1347, attributed to an unknown artist now known as the Snårestadsmästaren, named after this very church. The original paintings have since been lost, but they survive today only through nineteenth-century drawings made by the antiquarian Nils Månsson Mandelgren.

A burial mound east of the church has long been associated with local legend: some accounts link it to a figure said to have given Snårestad its name, while folklore also speaks of trolls dwelling within it. Archaeological finds have been made there, and it once carried a wooden bell tower housing two bells cast in 1592 and 1679. When patronage rights passed to the owners of Marsvinsholm in 1787, plans eventually led to the bells being removed to the new church at Marsvinsholm, reportedly despite local protests, and even though the 1787 agreement had specified that churchyards and their belongings should remain undisturbed.

The loss of the bells was not forgotten. In 1908 a local women's sewing circle, said to have been founded by Johanna Persson, wife of the merchant and builder Nils Persson, began raising funds for a replacement bell tower. Donations grew steadily, and by 1922 the group had accumulated enough to consider rebuilding the church itself instead, coinciding with the abolition of patronage rights that same year. Nils Persson himself was engaged as builder, working to Wåhlin's designs, and the new church was consecrated in 1925.

The rebuilt church kept the old rectangular nave plan but with a narrower, lower chancel ending in a semicircular apse, and parts of the medieval walls were incorporated into the new structure. A sandstone font bowl carved with palmette ornament survives from the earlier church, along with a brass christening dish of the 1500s or 1600s decorated with a relief of the Fall of Man; other historic fittings, including a 1774 chalice and 1626 candlesticks, are now kept at Marsvinsholms kyrka. Wall paintings near the altar are the work of Karl Reinhold Dahlqvist.