Heby

Heby appears in written sources from the later fourteenth century. In the 1540s it consisted of two tax-paying farms, northeast of the church hill at Västerlövsta. Division of holdings and the addition of outlying land enlarged it to six farms by the late seventeenth century, arranged as a row village. Nearby church lands included both enclosed fields and outlying pasture or woodland.

Västerlövsta's present church was built in the late fifteenth century. Its vaults, made by master mason Anders of Enköping, carried faces and geometric ornaments. Early in the following century the chancel gained narrative paintings, probably by Anders Martinsson. An altarpiece made in Jan de Molder's Antwerp workshop around 1520 depicted Christ's Passion, death and Resurrection. This imported work brought Netherlandish carving into a small Swedish parish. The farms and church together make up the rural history of Heby.