Hemsjö kyrka

The present building replaced earlier churches that stood roughly 900 metres away, on a site now marked only by a disused churchyard. Designs for the new church were drawn up in 1854 by the architect Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander, and building work took place between 1857 and 1859, with consecration following on 5 October 1862. The result is a single-nave hall church in a restrained neoclassical style typical of nineteenth-century Swedish church architecture, with a west tower, long nave and a polygonal chancel to the east.

The tower is capped by a rounded, square-based dome topped with a lantern pierced by round-arched openings, both covered in weathered copper sheeting. Inside, the nave and chancel have panelled timber ceilings with exposed beams, decorative cornices and painted ornamentation, some of it dating from a 1924 repainting scheme by John Hedaeus featuring marbling and folk-art kurbits motifs.

Among the furnishings, the altarpiece was carved in 1674 by Marcus Jäger the Elder for the earlier church, depicting the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden. The organ loft parapet carries painted figures of the apostles from 1724, attributed to Sven Wernberg. Two medieval oak sculptures also survive: a seated Madonna and Child from the 1200s and a standing figure identified as Saint Olof from the same period.

The church's most celebrated possession is the so-called Hemsjömanualet, a handbook for church rites dating from the late fourteenth century. It is thought to be the only surviving manual of its kind from the Catholic era that can be firmly linked to a specific church within the diocese of Skara; the manuscript itself is kept at the diocesan library in Skara rather than in the church. Equally distinctive is the medieval font, carved with runic inscriptions that have long intrigued scholars; owned by the Swedish History Museum, it was returned to stand in the church from Midsummer Day 2005.

The building has seen various changes over the twentieth century, including roof and structural repairs in the 1920s, the installation of central heating in 1935, and further redecoration, re-rendering and roof works at intervals up to the early 2000s. The church's bell, known as Karin, is an uninscribed late-medieval casting marked only with wheel-cross symbols. Two organs are in use: a loft organ with an eighteenth-century case, rebuilt several times and now containing older pipework within a 1974 mechanism, and a smaller mechanical chancel organ built in 1990.