kostel svatého Linharta (Prameny) Church

The Church of Saint Linhart in Prameny in the Cheb region no longer stands. Once a parish church, it fell into disrepair after 1945 and was demolished in 1958.

Its history dates back to the time when the lords of Rýzmberk received from Charles IV the mining settlement of Prameny as a fief, with the right to conduct free mining operations. The first mention of the church comes from the year 1357. The then owner of the Bečov estate appointed the Prameny parish priest, a clergyman named Andreas, to office. How the original late Gothic church looked and who built it is not known.

In the sixteenth century, Prameny and the surrounding villages converted to Protestantism and the parish priests were Evangelicals. After recatholization, the church became a filial to the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul in Mnichov, and remained so until 1710. Between 1615 and 1618, it underwent a fundamental reconstruction into a late Renaissance form. From the Gothic structure, the ground plan remained, as well as the pointed portal on the southern wall of the nave and the door frame to the sacristy. The original bell tower in front of the western façade had apparently already needed to be demolished by the early sixties of the seventeenth century due to its poor condition. It was replaced by a new, early Baroque tower. In 1700, a vaulted vestibule was added on the southern side, and the last late Baroque modifications took place in 1768.

The church had one rectangular nave, a presbytery and sacristy on the east side. On the west side, a pyramidal tower with an onion dome and large clocks was attached to it. The nave was covered with a shingled roof. Inside was a wooden, colorfully painted coffered ceiling. On the columns stood a robust wooden gallery with three branches, on whose pillars the year 1692 was carved. The organ, which was donated by a local resident, Thusnelda Tanzerová, was transported to the church in Velká Hleďseba in the nineteen fifties. In front of the church stood a Gothic stone poor box, one meter and thirty centimeters tall.

The main altar of Saint Linhart was made in 1868 by the carpenter master Anton Hahn from Čistá. The side altars and pulpit also came from him, dating from 1883, completed by Johann Weninger from Horní Slavkov. On the evangelical side also stood an altar of Saint John of Nepomuk.

After the war, the German population was expelled. The municipality, which bore the name Sangerberg until 1947, was not resettled, and the Slavkovský Forest became a military training ground. Prameny survived only because its first command headquarters was located there. The abandoned church was, on the basis of a mass demolition order from 1957, razed to the ground a year later.