Malexanders kyrka

The earliest written record connecting a church to this site dates from 1345, when Knut Jonsson, a relative of Birgitta Birgersdotter of nearby Aspenäs, left money to the church and its priest. That timber church burned down in 1587, and a new wooden church was built in its place; a stone sacristy may have survived the fire and been incorporated into the replacement. Little or nothing from the medieval church is thought to have survived.

As the local population grew during the nineteenth century, the old wooden church became too small, and a new stone church was built just to the south of it, completed in 1881 in a medieval-revival style with a rectangular nave, a semicircular chancel, sacristy and west tower. The old timber church was then dismantled, and its material was auctioned off; much of it was bought by a local landowner, and painted timbers are said to survive in a barn at Bålnäs.

According to a story recorded locally, a dispute arose during construction between the church council and the man responsible for quarrying and transporting stone, who felt he deserved extra payment for using more stone than budgeted. When this was refused, he is said to have remarked that the church would stand in his lifetime and his wife's, but after that no one could say. He died in 1925, and his widow was buried on 10 February 1929 — the same night, tradition holds, that Malexander's church burned. Whatever the truth of the tale, the fire that winter left the church a blackened ruin, though its stone walls survived well enough to be reused.

Rebuilding was completed in 1931 to designs by the architect Johannes Dahl, with the exterior differing from before chiefly in its tall, pointed spire. Inside, the western end of the nave was partitioned off for a sacristy and other rooms, reducing the size of the worship space, while the chancel was opened up once the original sacristy was relocated.

Among the furnishings is an altarpiece of 1933 by the Dalarna-region artist Jerk Werkmäster, depicting Christ blessing the children, given by a local benefactor. The chancel windows contain stained glass by the German artist Charles Crodel, who also produced glass for churches at Mjölby and Högby. In the churchyard stands an older burial vault, built in 1789 for a local noble family, along with a smaller domed burial chapel; other burial vaults recorded on an 1817 map have since been demolished.