The earliest existing historical records of the church date back to the year 1774, but the church is much older than that. Local tradition says it may have been built by monks from Ireland. The church is said to have been originally built in 1188 (or around that time), but one source says that it was built in the late 1400s. The stone long church was built in a Romanesque style, in a design that was very common in the 1100s and 1200s, but the walls are thinner than most churches of that time. They only measure about 1.2 to 1.3 metres (3ft 11in to 4ft 3in) in width, which could point to a later construction date. It has a rectangular nave with narrower and chancel with a lower roof line, and it has no church porch. The nave measures about 19 by 14 metres (62ft ×46ft) and the chancel measures about 9 by 10 metres (30ft ×33ft). The church is a stone church, but all the gable walls are built out of wood.[3][4][5]
The church was damaged by fire on several occasions. The church burned and was rebuilt after fires in 1709, 1772, 1848, and most recently on 3 February 1920. However, after the fire in 1920, it was decided that a new, main church for the parish should be built across the strait in the village of Melandsjøen on the north shore of the island of Hitra. This was a controversial decision, but the parish agreed to rebuild the old Dolm Church and maintain it in exchange for the brand new church about 1 kilometre (0.62mi) away on the larger island, where the majority of the people lived.[6][7] So, in 1927 the new Hitra Church was built and that church became the new main church for the parish. Dolm Church was rebuilt, but it was now an annex church for the parish that is used infrequently.[4][5]
Election church
In 1814, this church served as an election church (Norwegian: valgkirke).[8][9] Together with more than 300 other parish churches across Norway, it was a polling station for elections to the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly which wrote the Constitution of Norway. This was Norway's first national elections. Each church parish was a constituency that elected people called "electors" who later met together in each county to elect the representatives for the assembly that was to meet at Eidsvoll Manor later that year.[8][10]
