to the south with its own entrance was also added. In 1723, the church was sold into private ownership at the Norwegian church auction so the King could pay off debts from the Great Northern War. The largest addition to the church came to the north with a log construction. This new part was named the "new church" (). The construction was finished during the 1700s (this area was torn down in around 1875). There are no known images of the interior from this time, but a story written by the priest Niels Dahl, who is assumed to have visited the church in 1824, describes the interior: In 1814, this church served as an election church (). 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 in Eidsvoll later that year. In the 1870s, the two neighboring Hove Church and Hopperstad Stave Church parishes were both in need of new churches. The issue was first raised by the local parish priest Jørgen Christian Andreas Grøner who complained about the size of the two churches. Both churches were old and small and due to their age, they were in dire need of improvements. The local villagers believed he was exaggerating and the private owners of the church did not want to spend money on the churches. Soon after, the local priest decided to no longer hold services at the Hopperstad Stave Church since it was so cold and drafty. Within a short period of time, it was decided to merge the two neighboring parishes into one larger parish. On 11 December 1875, a royal decree was issued that ordered the closure of both churches and the construction of a new church in Vikøyri for the newly created parish. In 1877, the new Vik Church was constructed and the two older churches were taken out of regular use and preserved as historical sites. In 1877, after about 700 years in use, the old church was abandoned. The church had been in very poor condition for many years and three years after its closure, the Society for the