Hjälsta kyrka

The present church was raised in stages: the nave and chancel were begun shortly before 1470 and completed some twenty years later, with the sacristy and porch following soon after, so that the whole building was finished around 1490. It replaced an older church at Skönsberg, roughly 600 metres to the south, which had served the parish since the 1200s. According to tradition recorded by the antiquarian Johan Peringskiöld, that earlier site was abandoned because rising water levels in Lake Mälaren had made the ground too wet, prompting the move to higher ground.

Built of grey stone, the church consists of a nave with a sacristy added to the north and a porch to the south, both built after the nave itself. The vaults, raised at the same time as the walls, are considered particularly fine for a country church, with an eight-part cross vault in the nave, a star vault with a quatrefoil pattern and carved faces in the porch, and a further vault in the chancel. Unusually, the interior has no surviving medieval wall paintings.

Apart from some window alterations in the 1700s and 1800s, the church remained largely unchanged until a restoration in 1895 introduced a Gothic Revival interior, new pews and stained glass in the chancel window. A further restoration between 1951 and 1955, led by architect Cyrillus Johansson, removed much of the 1895 scheme and reinstated enclosed pews, along with a new altar in the sacristy incorporating fragments of a medieval altar slab.

Among the furnishings is a plain sandstone font from the 1200s, brought from one of the earlier churches; it was removed from the church at some point in the 1800s but returned to use after a visit by Archbishop Nathan Söderblom in 1925. A substantial triumphal crucifix, probably from the later 1400s, was also reinstated in 1925 and later rehung in the chancel arch during the 1950s restoration. The Renaissance-style pulpit, dated to the 1600s, was bought in 1895 from the then-disused Fittja church; according to tradition it had once stood in the chapel at Biskops-Arnö castle, said to have arrived there as war booty from Poland, though this story cannot be verified. The altar cabinet with painted panels, created by Sister Marianne of Alsike convent, dates from the 1951–1955 restoration.

The church's older silver was stolen in 1855 and never recovered; the congregation used plated substitutes until a new set of communion silver, made by the Markström goldsmiths of Uppsala, was donated in 1950. The small organ, built in 1847 by the Stockholm firm Blomquist & Lindgren, has five stops and a facade designed by architect Carl-Gustaf Blom-Carlsson.