Espoon kirkonmäki (Esbo kyrkbacke)

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

Espoo Kirkonmäki is a church environment dating back to the Middle Ages, which, as is typical of historical parish centres, includes a church with its bell tower and churchyards, a parish hall, a parsonage, a school, and a newer cemetery with its funeral chapels.

Kirkonmäki is a ridge rising from the Espoonjokilaakso valley, on which the church, the parish hall and the parsonage buildings are located. In the vicinity of Kirkonmäki are also Lagstad school, Doms house and Lövkulla hill with its farm buildings.

The late medieval grey stone church, extended into a cross-plan church, belongs to the so-called east Uusimaa church group. The east and west parts of the original three-aisled vaulted nave have survived with their pillars and lime paintings.

In the churchyard there are several family graves of old Espoo families with their memorials, as well as an 18th-century bell tower and a mortuary built in the early 19th century and converted into a funeral chapel. In the western part of the site are Espoo funeral chapel and the Kappeli cemetery from the 1960s.

On the high hill west of the church, the Empire-style main building of Muurala parsonage was built on the stone foundation of an older parsonage. The wing buildings in the yard date from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

On the hill opposite Espoo church, on the medieval village hill of Södrik, stands the Jugendstil-inspired main building of Doms original farm, the last of the village's five original farms. At the eastern edge of the area, Lövkulla hill consists of two farmsteads, between which runs the branch of Suuri Rantatie leading to the church.

History

The oldest settlement of Espoo concentrated in the Middle Ages along the Espoonjokilaakso valley and the Glimsinjoki river. The Talvitie road passed by the church, and a branch from the Suuri Rantatie made a detour to the church between Morby and Lövkulla. The villages were situated on the edges of the river valley.

There are three significant building phases in the history of Espoo Cathedral. The oldest parts of the church, including the surviving roof truss structures, date from the end of the 15th century. The extension of the church into a cruciform church began in 1821 under the direction of architect Pehr Granstedt. In the restoration designed by architect Armas Lindgren in 1929-31, the church interior was renewed and the lime-wash paintings were uncovered. The present altar arrangement of the interior dates from the 1982 repair designed by architect Ola Hansson.

The cemetery surrounding the church has been extended on several occasions. At the beginning of the 19th century, an area on the north side of the church was taken into use as a cemetery, and the area was extended onto the parsonage land in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1930 it was decided to fit out the mortuary on the old cemetery as a funeral chapel. For the new Kappeli cemetery, the Espoo parishes bought the Lammas area in the early 1950s. In 1957 architect Heikki Sirén was chosen as the chief planner of the area; the interior designer was Lasse Gestranius and the landscape architect Juho Jännes. The funeral chapel and the new cemetery were consecrated for use in 1963, the crematorium in 1964.

The rectory of the vicar, completed in 1853, was designed by architect Jean Wiik. Two wing buildings consist of the bake house with chambers dating from 1818 and the rows of granary storehouses and storage buildings from the 1770s. The parsonage office building was built in 1932.

The schoolhouse that had stood empty on the land of the Backby farm was donated as a parish hall in 1887 and moved to its new site near the church in 1889-90. A Finnish-language elementary school operated in the parish hall at the beginning of the 20th century. The parish hall passed into the ownership of the parish in 1933, and the assembly room was extended into a parish hall.

In 1869 the municipality of Espoo leased the Lagstad farm from the parish; in the Middle Ages it had come to the church through a testamentary bequest. The school was built in the 1870s and extended in the 1880s. When the new school was completed, the Lagstad school was converted into an office.

The two farms of Lövkulla were originally one of the four parent farms of Glomsby, the Lövkulla cavalry farm, which was divided in two in 1756. To the south of Lövkulla was the Espoo health spring, whose heyday was the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. It was especially popular with Helsinki high society and the officers of Suomenlinna. No buildings have survived; today, on the site of this historic fixed ancient monument, there is a small copse surrounded by fields.