How Old Is the Church? Dating a Medieval Parish Church

You date a medieval parish church by reading it part by part, since almost all of them have been rebuilt several times. A nave with a narrower chancel and a semicircular apse, thick walls and small, high-set round-arched windows point to the 12th or early 13th century. A chancel as wide as the nave, pointed windows and brick vaults belong to the later Middle Ages, the 14th and 15th centuries. Star vaults and vault paintings such as Albertus Pictor's in Täby are usually from the second half of the 15th century. Large windows, galleries and spires are for the most part additions from the 17th century onwards.

Facts

Start with the Plan

The Swedish medieval parish church has a simple plan, as the drawing in the basics shows: a west tower, a nave without aisles, a narrower chancel, often a semicircular apse in the east, a porch at the entrance and a vestry, usually on the north side of the chancel. The drawing below can be explored, and the photo shows Husaby Church in Västergötland, where the 12th-century west tower with its three spires is among the oldest surviving in the country.

The plan is the first clue. If the parts follow one another in decreasing width, nave, chancel and apse, the foundation is often Romanesque, from the 12th or early 13th century. In the late Middle Ages many chancels and apses were demolished and replaced by a larger chancel, as wide as the nave and square-ended in the east. A church that is a single long, straight box can therefore be medieval in origin but rebuilt in the 14th or 15th century. Porches and vestries are also often later additions from the same period.

Windows and Walls

The windows are the clearest dating evidence. Romanesque windows are small, round-arched and set high up, in deep recesses in walls that can be more than a metre thick; they let in little light and little cold. Gothic windows are pointed and larger. Large rectangular or round-arched windows in even rows are almost always from the 18th or 19th century, when windows were enlarged to give more light for the Lutheran sermon. Look for walled-up windows: the small Romanesque openings often show as traces in the render beside the large new ones.

The wall also tells a story. The oldest churches were built of fieldstone, sandstone or limestone from the district, like Dalby Church in Scania from about 1060, probably Scandinavia's oldest surviving stone church. Brick came with Gothic in the 13th century, in the Mälaren Valley and southern Sweden often on North German models. A church with brick gables or brick vaults in a fieldstone wall has thus probably got its vaults later than the walls were built.

Vaults, Roofs and Paintings

The Romanesque parish churches mostly had flat timber ceilings. During the 13th to 15th centuries vaults were built in many of them, first cross vaults and then, in the late Middle Ages, star vaults, where extra ribs form a star pattern. Star vaults are common in Swedish churches from the 15th century, and the difference between the types of vault is explained in the guide to vaults and arches. If the vaults sit low and cut into the windows, they are probably later than the walls.

The vaults were often painted. The best-known painter is Albertus Pictor, who with his workshop in Stockholm painted vaults and walls in some thirty churches in Uppland and around Lake Mälaren in the second half of the 15th century. In Täby church a knight plays chess against Death; the picture in the art section shows how the star vaults became surfaces for stories. After the Reformation many paintings were whitewashed over and were uncovered again only during restorations in the 19th and 20th centuries, so paintings you see today may have lain hidden for several hundred years.

The Tower and the Rest of the Churchyard

The west tower is often the oldest part of the church. Some towers were defensive towers, built to serve also as refuge and storehouse, and some churches were round, such as Hagby in Småland, Solna and Valleberga in Scania. The spire on top is by contrast seldom medieval; many were given new tower caps after fires in the 17th and 18th centuries. If the church has no tower, the bells may hang in a freestanding timber belfry.

Around the church there is often a churchyard wall of fieldstone and a lychgate, a gateway with a roof. Inside, the Reformation has left its mark: the pulpit became one of the most important pieces of furniture in the room, and in the 17th and 18th centuries fixed pews and galleries arrived. A medieval church can thus have medieval walls, 15th-century vaults, a 17th-century pulpit and 19th-century windows, all at once.

Exercise: Reading a Church on Site

Walk round the church on the outside before you go in. Start in the east: is there an apse, or is the chancel square-ended? Compare the width of the chancel with the nave. Count the types of window and look for walled-up openings. Look at the corners, where the stones are often larger and better dressed, and see whether the wall changes material higher up. Then go in and look up: flat ceiling, cross vault or star vault? Are there paintings in the vaults?

Finally, write a simple timeline: foundation, vaults, windows, tower. The answer is seldom a single year but a sequence of building phases, and it is precisely that sequence which is the history of the church. One sign of the Middle Ages rather than the 19th century is that the chancel and the nave differ in width or height; a church that is entirely uniform is more often a later building, as the guide to Gothic and Gothic Revival describes. Gotland's more than ninety medieval churches are the best practice ground; see the guide to the churches of Gotland and Visby. More about the spaces of a church in the guide to the parts of a church and about the styles in the guide to Romanesque and Gothic architecture.

Signs of Age in a Swedish Church

Exercise

A parish church has a semicircular apse, a chancel narrower than the nave, thick walls and small round-arched windows high up. When was it probably built?