Klockrike kyrka

The building is a single-nave structure with large round-arched windows, a west tower and an internal apse to the east, prized for its restrained symmetry and clean lines typical of the Karl Johan style of the early nineteenth century. Sources differ slightly on the consecration date, giving either 1826 or 1830, so visitors should treat the exact year with some caution.

Inside, the eye is drawn to a substantial altarpiece framed by pilasters and topped with a gilded sun motif, surrounding Fredric Westin's painting of Christ in Gethsemane. Behind it is a fresco of the Resurrection by the Vadstena artist known as Vulcan, which briefly served as the main altar image before the painted altarpiece was installed. A medieval font and a pietà figure stand on the epistle side, while the pulpit faces from the gospel side.

The church stands on the site of a much older settlement whose name may derive from a pagan sacrificial grove, and local tradition tells of a thirteenth-century priest, later venerated locally as a saint, whose remains were said to have been taken to Linköping Cathedral. Such folk stories should be read as tradition rather than verified history.

The present building, completed after around twenty years of preparation, was designed by a director named Holmberg and dedicated to Josephina, thought to refer to Josephine of Leuchtenberg. It absorbed the congregations of both Klockrike and Brunneby without merging the parishes, and its predecessor, the old medieval church a short distance away, was demolished in the 1820s; its ruins and abandoned churchyard can still be seen nearby. Several older furnishings, including carved wooden madonnas, a crucifix and an altar cabinet dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, were preserved and later reinstated in the new building.

A large mechanical organ was built for the west gallery in 1842 by the Stockholm organ builder Pehr Zacharias Strand, his final commission in Östergötland, and it has been altered and repaired several times since. A medieval font of uncertain earlier history, which had at one point served as a garden planter, was donated to the church in the 1960s and now stands in the choir.