Vammalan kirkko

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

Situated at the junction of a historic road and a waterway, in an impressive landscape setting, Tyrvää Church, the church of the Vammala urban area, is one of the most representative examples of the varied church architecture of the second half of the 19th century.

Tyrvää Church is the main church of Sastamala parish. The brick church is built on a headland projecting into Vammaskoski, at the junction of the roads and the waterway. In its external architecture it is cathedral-like and imposing; in plan it is an internally splayed cross church, whose altar lies in a full-height projecting choir apse at the east end. The crossing is emphasised by a low polygonal roof section. The western transept arm terminates in twin towers, linked by a three-storey gallery passage. The unplastered brick outer walls are articulated by round-arched windows.

In the austere white nave there is a flat board ceiling. The fixed interior fittings, including the galleries and the pulpit, are original. There are three altarpieces. The subjects of the altarpieces painted by R.W. Ekman in 1866 are the Crucifixion, the Transfiguration of Christ and the Resurrection.

On the bank of Vammaskoski, on the opposite shore from the church, is the so-called Tyrvää new parsonage, whose old stone cowshed, built in 1890, serves as the Tyrvää regional museum. The adjacent bridge spanning Vammaskoski was built in 1913-1915.

History

Vammala Church was built in 1848-1855 to designs by P.J. Gylich, town architect of Turku, who drew several churches in Satakunta. The interior was renovated in the 1930s in a repair designed by architect Bertel Strömmer. Today the church is in the form it took after a restoration carried out following a small fire in 1982.

The classicist main building of the parsonage was completed in 1923 on the site of an earlier wooden parsonage building, which had been destroyed by fire.

A fixed bridge already existed at the crossing point of Vammaskoski in the 17th century. The road that crosses the bridge is part of an old inland road that ran from Turku to Ylä-Satakunta and Tavastia already in the 16th century. The construction work on the present bridge, 114 metres long, was led by master builder Valle Antila. On completion, the bridge was one of the most significant in the country.