The name Locknevi is thought to derive from an older form meaning Freja's holy place, and the surrounding landscape supports the idea of ancient significance: a large burial field from the Bronze and Iron Ages lies to the north-east, while nearby Skansberget preserves the remains of an Iron Age hill fort.
A church is believed to have stood here since the twelfth century, with successive timber buildings replacing one another over the centuries. Faced with a building too small for the congregation, parishioners decided in 1732 to erect a larger timber church capable of seating at least a thousand people; this structure was completed in 1745. It served the parish for well over a century, with a notable alteration in 1886, when the vestry and church roof were raised to accommodate a newly ordered organ, and the doors were changed to open outward as a fire precaution.
By 1900 this timber church had been demolished to make way for the present stone building, though its materials were not wasted — they were sold and used to build a poorhouse in nearby Frödinge, later serving as an old people's home and a nursery school, and surviving today as a privately owned, metal-clad rental building.
Construction of the current granite church took place between 1900 and 1903, with a tower at the west end. Planning had begun decades earlier, in the 1860s, and initial drawings were produced in 1872 by the architect P. U. Stenhammar; after his death, the plans were carried forward by architect and statesman Hugo Hammarskjöld of Tuna gård. The building itself was raised by local people using granite blocks quarried nearby.
Several treasured furnishings were carried over from the old timber church, linking the new building to centuries of parish worship. Most notable is the font, carved in the 1180s by the Gotland master Sighraf, alongside a pulpit and altarpiece dated to 1660, a crucifix, fragments of an incense burner, and two medieval gravestones from the 1300s. The church organ has its own layered history: an instrument built by E. A. Setterquist & Son of Örebro in 1885 was installed in the old church only after the roof-raising of 1886, then transferred to the new stone church in 1903 and later expanded in the 1970s.