Ankarsrums kyrka

The building's origins lie not in church life but in the temperance and free-church movements. It was constructed between 1890 and 1896 as a meeting hall for local Good Templars and Methodists, who shared the premises: the Templars used the smaller lower hall, while the Methodists occupied the upper storey. The wider nave was only completed in 1904. Throughout, the walls were built of slag stone from the Ankarsrum ironworks, with brick from the Almvik brickworks used around the windows and doors, and pointed-arch windows cast in iron.

Before this, villagers had belonged to Hallingeberg parish, whose church lay some distance away; from the early nineteenth century a priest travelled to Ankarsrum roughly monthly to hold services, baptise children and give communion to the elderly. Calls for a resident clergyman began in 1902, though the post was not established until 1918.

In 1917 the works' owner, Sven Spångberg, bought the old chapel and its land and gave it to the parish on condition it be converted for use by the state church. It was consecrated in May 1918. A thorough rebuilding and redecoration followed from 1920, designed by the architect Erik Fant of the Royal Board of Building, with painting by Gustav Wigren and decorative work by Axel Hörlin. Fant also designed new fittings throughout, including the pulpit, altar and altarpiece surround.

The altarpiece itself, depicting penitent sinners after a composition by Rubens, was donated by the Ankarsrum works in 1938. A granite font dates from 1964. Northeast of the church stands a slag-stone-based bell tower of tarred timber, put up around 1924, while the churchyard, laid out from 1909 and consecrated in 1910, includes a small white mortuary chapel built in 1936, also to Fant's design.

The church's organ has its own layered history: an instrument built in 1921 by Alfred Fehrling of Stockholm was later rebuilt behind its original façade in 1976 by Nils-Olof Berg, giving the church a mechanical organ within a much older case.