Buttress church
The buttress church is a type of wooden church which is characteristic of Finnish architecture . In the 17th and 18th centuries it was mainly found in the western Finnish landscape of Österbotten , and occasionally in other parts of Finland and Sweden .
The single-nave buttress pillars have a simple rectangular floor plan and are built in block construction. A characteristic of this type of building is that the side walls are reinforced by pairs of hollow box pillars. These are located at the connection points of the beams and reduce the pressure that the weight load of the roof structure exerts on them. The number of pairs of supporting pillars is usually two, sometimes one or three, depending on the size of the church. On the inside, the supporting pillars are connected in both the longitudinal and transverse directions by composite beams. Most churches have a tall, slender church tower at the end of the gable . The church bell is usually housed in a freestanding stack of bells . A sacristy and an armory are often built on the long sides .
The design language of the pillared churches is based on the example of the medieval Finnish stone churches . Their rectangular floor plan with attached sacristy and armory corresponds to that of the older stone churches. The medieval churches of Österbotten such as the church of Pedersöre (beginning of the 16th century) also have models for the pointed church tower . The support pillar construction represents an attempt to bring the structural forms of the medieval stone churches into harmony with the technical conditions of the timber construction.
List of buttress churches
Of the originally over one hundred pillar churches, only twelve have survived today. Eleven of them are in Finland, one in Sweden ( Jukkasjärvi ).
| place | church | construction time | Remarks | image |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alastaro , Loimaa | Alastaro Church | 1754 | Moved from Loimaa to Alastaro in 1840–41 , rebuilt in 1896–97 |
|
| Jukkasjärvi , Kiruna | Jukkasjärvi Church | 1726 |
|
|
| Kempele | Old church of Kempele | 1688-1691 |
|
|
| Kristinestad | Ulrika Eleonora Church | 1700 |
|
|
| Muhos | Church of Muhos | 1634 |
|
|
| Sodankylä | Sodankylä old church | 1689 |
|
|
| Temmes , Tyrnävä | Temmes Church | 1767 |
|
|
| Tervola | Old church of Tervola | 1687-89 |
|
|
| Tornio | Church of Tornio | 1684-86 |
|
|
| Ullava , Kokkola | Ullava Church | 1783 |
|
|
| Utajärvi | Utajärvi Church | 1762 |
|
|
| Vörå | Vörå Church | 1626-27 | In 1777 extended to the Kreuzkirche |
|