Strå kyrka

The church was built towards the end of the 1100s or around 1200, originally with a nave, chancel and apse to the east and a narrow tower to the west. Vaulting was added later in the medieval period. In 1545 the building came close to demolition, its stone earmarked for the construction of Vadstena Castle, but it survived. Substantial alterations followed over the centuries: a northern extension was added, probably in the late medieval period or the 1600s, which left the tower asymmetrically placed against the west gable, and in the early 1700s the chancel and apse were pulled down so the church could be lengthened to full width at its eastern end.

The tower's distinctive domed cap and lantern, which give the church its recognisable silhouette today, were added in 1771–1772 by master builder Mårten Beurling; before this the tower had only a plain timber roof, having earlier possessed a stone cap. Further changes came in the nineteenth century, when the porch on the south wall was removed and a new entrance opened through the tower from the west. The interior was restored in 1948 under the direction of Erik Lundberg, and the exterior was restored in 1991, when the church received a new slate roof.

Several furnishings reflect the parish's investment in the church during the 1600s and 1700s. A stone font was supplied in 1663 by Michael Hackes's workshop in Skänninge, and a pulpit was made in 1667 by master craftsman Johan Gabrielsson of Vadstena, funded by parishioners each contributing grain. The carved altarpiece, made in 1743 by the sculptor Bengt Wedulin of Hjo, depicts the Crucifixion flanked by figures including Moses and Aaron; an eighteenth-century account by Carl Fredric Broocman describes the church and its furnishings in some detail, though such historical descriptions should be read as period testimony rather than a checklist of what survives unchanged today.

Two carved grave slabs, formerly set into the church floor, were moved to the exterior of the east gable in 1908 during unauthorised repair works that also altered the pulpit. Among the church's older items is a medieval primer bell that once hung beneath the vault and was rung during Mass, along with a communion chalice with a medieval base. The present organ was built in 1934 by the firm E. A. Setterquist & Son of Örebro, replacing an earlier nineteenth-century instrument.