Filialkirche Innerochsenbach

The Catholic branch church of St Martin stands on the former castle mound in the village centre of Innerochsenbach, a hamlet belonging to the market town of Ferschnitz in Lower Austria. Built as part of the parish of Steinakirchen am Forst, it became a branch of Ferschnitz parish in 1752. The church is protected as a listed monument and shows traces of its medieval origins. The building combines a 14th-century polygonal choir with a 16th-century nave, both covered in steep shingle roofs at the same height. A simple west tower rises above the slate-clad structure of roughly coursed stone without ashlar dressings. Inside, the right-hand wall of the side aisle carries a 1548 fresco of Christ under the cross, while the high altar of about 1700 holds a statue of St Martin with book and goose donated by Princess Aloisia von Starhemberg in the mid-19th century. Visitors find a late-Gothic hall church supported by two pillars, its plain rectangular nave lit by windows from the same workshop that made glass for churches in Weiten, Zelking and Euratsfeld. The choir retains original fittings, and a 17th-century bell by Martin Fitler hangs in the roof turret. The organ’s 19th-century Brustpositiv completes the furnishings of this quietly kept country church.