Maskun kirkko ja pappila

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

Masku Church together with its parsonage forms the Masku parish centre, one of the oldest parish centres on the Turku region coast. Its varied medieval environment, which developed over the centuries, also includes a bell tower standing at the junction of medieval roads and the churchyard with its burial chapels. The church is situated in the farmland by the Maskunjoki river, which is the central area of Iron Age and medieval settlement.

Masku Church is located at the junction of the medieval roads between Turku and Rauma and between Naantali and Rusko. Next to the church is an Iron Age burial site, the so-called Humikkala cemetery, and nearby is the prehistoric settlement site of Myllymäki. Attached to the north side of the main body with its pantile roof, near the east end, is a sacristy older than the main body, and on the south side is an armoury, younger than the main body. Unusually, the church has no west portal. In front of the priest's door, a wooden vestibule has survived.

The single-nave church hall has four bays with star vaults built on pilasters and shield arches. The vault ribs are decorated with a linear striped pattern. Around the lower part of the walls runs a drapery painting in red and blue from the 17th century. The church pews and the organ gallery date from the 1880s. The medieval artefacts include, among others, a late medieval triumphal crucifix, a Silesian altar cabinet and a limestone baptismal font. A baroque pulpit, limestone gravestones in the choir floor and a church ship depicting a two-decker ship of the line date from the 17th century. From the following century are the votive cabinet of parish priest Simon Vaccenius and his wife Regina Reuter, oil paintings by church painter Jonas Bergman, and a rococo cabinet clock donated by the parish youth.

In the churchyard are the Juva and Kankaiset burial chapels. The burial chapel of the Kankaiset manor nearby, built of stone in the middle of the 17th century, was later used as a storage shelter. The building is square in plan and is covered by a two-part pyramid roof with pantile covering. The builder was probably Privy Councillor Kustaa Eevertinpoika Horn (1614-1666). The Juva burial chapel, built of log construction, dates from the late 18th century.

The bell tower at the junction of the roads running west of the church has a grey stone lower part from the medieval period, but the date of completion of its wooden upper structures is not known. Masku parsonage was established already in the Middle Ages on the lands of Humikkala village, near the church. The present empire-style parsonage main building with a hipped roof was built in 1860 to designs by provincial architect G.Th. Chiewitz. The oldest parts of the vaulted stone cellar were built in 1685. The parsonage yard includes a park and other buildings, among them a stable from the 19th century and the so-called Hemming tupa, converted into a parish facility in the 1940s, dating from the early 20th century.

History

Masku was mentioned as a parish as early as 1234. From 1399 until the Reformation it was a prebend of the Bishop of Turku (a stipendiary parish), and from 1809 to 1834 a prebend of the Turku Academy. The grey-stone nave of the church was vaulted and the brick gables were built in the late 15th century. The sacristy was raised in 1780, and the choir window was enlarged at the end of the 18th century. The church interior was renewed in the 1880s. In the restoration carried out in 1915 under the direction of architect Alarik Tavaststjerna, the draperia painting on the lower part of the walls was uncovered, and a stained-glass mosaic was made for the choir window.