St. Henry's Chapel

The preaching house of St. Henry (Finnish Pyhän Henrikin saarnahuone ) is an old wooden building in the southwestern Finnish town Kokemäki. It is located about one kilometer east of the center of Kokemäki on the river bank Kokemäenjoki at the site of the medieval market place Telja.

According to tradition, it should be at the preaching house to a storage building in which the Holy Henry of Uppsala, the first bishop and patron saint of Finland, in 1156 preached and his last night spent before he was killed in neighboring Köyliö from the farmer Lalli. After Henry's death continued its veneration as a saint and the preaching house was a place of pilgrimage. The first written mention of the building dates from the 17th century.

The historicity of the tradition and the actual age of the preaching house of St. Henry are unclear. Dendrochronological studies in 1990 showed that the oldest of the examined wood beams of the building was made ​​from a 1472/73 felled tree, the other investigated beams were from the 16th and 17th centuries. It is not excluded that the preaching house actually dates back to the 12th century, since the components were apparently replaced several times during repair work. In any case, the preaching house of St. Henry is the oldest known wooden building in Finland.

1857 a neo-Gothic octagonal chapel was built of brick on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the Finnish church to protect the preaching house, designed by Pehr Johan Gylich around the old wooden buildings around.