Visited:20. 9. 2021
History:The church was built in the second half of the 13th century, probably at the end of the 1660s, when King Přemysl Otakar II donated the Louchov court together with the village of Vernéřov to the Saxon Cistercian monastery in Grünhain. Other sources place the foundation of the church less precisely in the second half of the thirteenth century. The foundation in the second half of the thirteenth century is documented by a building history survey. The church was located on an important trade route that probably ran here until the mid-fourteenth century. Louchov remained in the possession of the monastery until the first half of the sixteenth century, when the monastery ceased to exist. The church and the village itself were pledged by the Order to the Lords of Šumburk in the first half of the 14th century. The Šumburk family then sold Louchov together with half of the town of Přísečnice to the Hasištejnský of Lobkovice in 1446 and in 1490, when the family property was divided, it came into the possession of Bohuslav Hasištejnský of Lobkovice. The church contains the tomb (cenotaph) of the founder of the Lobkowicz family, Nicholas I. Chudý of Lobkovice and Bohuslav Hasištejnský of Lobkovice. Both of them were originally buried in the Church of St. Nicholas in Přísečnice, which was located only five kilometres away from this place and which has now been demolished and the site sunk to the bottom of the Přísečnice reservoir. Both churches were very similar and were in the possession of both prominent Lobkowicz families. The first written mention of the parish church in Louchov dates back to 1352, when the church is already mentioned as very poor and exempt from the papal tithe. At that time it was a Gothic building. The church itself underwent a late Gothic reconstruction sometime during the 15th century, when a massive wall was probably built, and thus, together with the preserved elements of active defence, the church can be classified as a so-called fortified church. Protestantism spread in the Erzgebirge from the 16th century onwards and the local parish therefore ceased to exist in 1623. During the Thirty Years' War the church was confiscated by the Swedish army in the winter of 1645 and used as stables. A new Catholic locality was established here during the church reforms of Joseph II in 1794 and the parish was not restored until 1853. Sometime around 1720 the church was modified, a tower was added and the nave was extended. In 1720 the interiors were also renovated in Baroque style. After 1945 the church was abandoned and gradually fell into disrepair. At this time, a Baroque inventory was still mentioned here, along with a late Gothic wooden statue of the Madonna from the circle of Ulrich Creutz. In the 1990s, devastation did not escape the interior, which was unfortunately also entirely destroyed. After years of neglected maintenance, it is in poor condition: the roof collapsed in 2011, the plaster is damaged and cracks appear in the masonry. In 2020, Ales Olbram Hoffmann became the owner of the church and there are attempts to gradually save it.
Source:https://www.louchov.cz/obyvatele/
Source:https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostel_svat%C3%A9ho_Jakuba_Star%C5%A1%C3%ADho_(Louchov)
Source:https://www.hrady.cz/kostel-sv-jakuba-vetsiho-louchov/
Impressions:A beautiful church that is gradually being reconstructed.
