Svenasjö kyrka

The site has a much older ecclesiastical history than the present building suggests. Several kilometres to the south-east once stood a medieval church and burial ground belonging to Svänasjö parish, which ceased to exist around 1570. The connection between that vanished medieval community and today's chapel gives the place a quiet sense of continuity, even though nothing of the original church survives above ground.

The building seen today began life in 1877 as a schoolhouse. It was pressed into use as a church from 1921, once the village had acquired a new school building. In 1929 a foundation, Svenasjö kyrkolokal, was established to oversee the site, and in 1934 the old schoolhouse was converted into a proper chapel to designs by the architect Sigfrid Ericson, who also created its fixed interior fittings. The chapel was formally handed over to Örby församling fifty years later, in 1984.

Constructed of timber with standing panelling painted in traditional Falun red, the chapel has a simple, functional plan: a nave with a chancel to the east, a sacristy to the south, and a small porch with the entrance to the west. The nave and chancel are covered by a hipped saddle roof, while the rest of the building has an ordinary saddle roof. Inside, a tall, vaulted pointed ceiling and walls are painted white, with fixed pews arranged either side of a central aisle leading to the altar at the far end of the chancel. A free-standing bell tower, erected in 1936, stands a short distance to the south-west.

Much of the fixed furnishing—altar, altar rail, pews, pulpit and font—was made in 1934 by the Hallstorps joinery works in Öxabäck, giving the interior a unified, workshop-made character from that period. Among the older items is an altar cabinet in the form of a triptych, made in Germany in 1683, which sits somewhat apart in age from the rest of the chapel's furnishings. The organ was installed in 1953.