Äppelbo kyrka

A chapel was first built on this site in the mid-16th century and enlarged in 1664; a map from 1682 shows it standing where the present church now stands. The current, larger timber church was consecrated in 1771, replacing the earlier chapel. It has a single-nave layout with cut corners, giving it an elongated, octagonal plan, and an attached sacristy at the eastern end thought to date from before 1800.

The most conspicuous later addition is the west tower, built in 1887 in a Gothic Revival style using post construction and decorative joinery, standing on a granite foundation like the rest of the building. Its onion-shaped, copper-clad spire houses clock faces on each side. Entrances lead through the tower to the west and through a porch on the south-eastern side of the nave.

Inside, the church is timber-lined with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and the high altar is flanked by two doorways leading to the sacristy behind. A gallery with a projecting central section, supported on wooden columns, occupies the western end of the nave. The major building campaign of the 1880s, overseen by master builder Björk Anders Jonsson, saw the tower erected and an older freestanding bell tower demolished; at the same time the older walls were rendered white and the interior walls panelled in wood.

A restoration in 1930, following proposals by the architect Magnus Dahlander, deliberately softened the church's Gothic Revival character: the pointed tops of the windows were closed in, the tower was rendered and painted white to better match the rest of the building, and the nave received new colouring, a new altar, closed-in pews and a new pulpit. A further restoration in 1982 reversed some of these changes, stripping the render from the tower to reveal its original timber cladding, restoring some of the joinery, and reinstating pointed window heads on the tower, while the exterior of the nave was left as it was.

Among the furnishings, the font in use today was completed in 1930 to Dahlander's design, carved as a pedestal on clawed feet with marbled and gilded decoration; an older font is kept in the sacristy. The current pulpit also dates from 1930, again to Dahlander's drawings, while the church's original combined altar-pulpit is preserved in the tower chamber. The organ, with 18 stops, was built by A. Magnussons orgelbyggeri and installed in 1991. Among the church's treasures, a bridal crown is noted as its foremost item of silver.