Church of Saint Margaret, Catholic church in Čermná ve Slezsku, Czech Republic.
The Church of Saint Margaret is a single-nave plastered masonry building on a rectangular plan with a rounded apse and a square stone tower that slightly projects from the facade and tapers upward. A sacristy and a depository with an oratory above adjoin the west side; the nave has a flat ceiling, the presbytery a barrel vault with lunettes, and the choir loft rests on two massive pillars.
The church was probably built in the first half of the 17th century; descriptions of two bells in its tower from 1666 support this dating. It was rebuilt in 1791–1792, when the original tower was likely incorporated into the new structure, and again in 1855, when it received its present form. In 2007 the church was declared a cultural monument of the Czech Republic together with its cemetery, mortuary, boundary wall with gate and cast-iron cross; a general repair followed in 2008–2010.
The church is a filial church of the Roman Catholic parish of Vítkov, so regular services are held elsewhere and the building is used for occasional Masses. Its movable furnishings include a set of oil paintings of the 14 Stations of the Cross, 126 × 70 cm, painted in 1847 by the Nový Jičín painter Ignác Berger (1822–1901), and a 19th-century painting of the Madonna in the presbytery.
The church stands in the centre of the cemetery enclosure, which the sources trace back to Müller's map of 1716 and the first military survey of 1762–1784. The dry-stone boundary wall, up to 1.60 m high, is pierced by a two-winged metal gate between two square pillars with bell-shaped capitals. The church is a filial church of the Vítkov parish, so services are not held here regularly.
The church's bells were described in 1666, which is how historians date the building to the first half of the 17th century. The tower was probably folded into the new structure during the 1791–1792 rebuilding, and the present appearance dates from 1855.
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