Thursday, February 14, 2008

Dragstrup church / Dragstrup kirke, Morsø Sønder herred, Thisted amt.


Dragstrup Church

Butterflies on the churchyard

The old church dike

The sacred well

The sacred well
The Romanesque church in Dragstrup is built in granite ashlars in ab. the 1100s. The porch iin small bricks is from 1870. The church is situated in a glade in a small forest on the western part of the island Mors near Limfjorden. The church yard is surrounded by a dike of big granite boulders, and in its north eastern corner is a sacred well, named the "Mary-Magdalene well" which supposedly cured eye diseases. The well was probably the reason why the church was built at this spot.

In the walls of the church are many stone mason marks, and the rests of a leprosy window is in the southern wall. The north door is untouched, while the south door is walled in.
The choir arch in the church with various profiled kragsten frame stones is original, and all the ceilings are beamed. The magnificent Romanesque granite baptismal font and the granite Communion table are from the first building of the church. The font has imaginative dragon figures and is considered one of the prettiest in Denmark. In the Communion table is a hiding place for a relic. The rest of the interior is from the 1500s. Sections from an earlier altar piece are now in Morslands Museum at Dueholm.

The church bell is from the 1400s and is placed in a modern 'glamhul' (window hole) in the gable.

Names in the Middle Ages:
Dragstrup (*1435 Dragzstrup)
Vester Jølby (*1433 Wester Julby); Dragstrupgaard (1581 Drastrupgaard); Digsind(*1433 Digsændæ, * 1435 Digisendæ) ; Kærgaard (1661 Kiergaard).

West of the road between Dragstrup and Ovtrup is the 'Voldsted' Kobbervold (embankment from a castle), a low square bank 57 x 57 m surrounded by a now dry and almost quite ploughed out moat and now closely plant.

A manor Digisende is mentioned in 1400, where Lage Urne's maternal aunt Maren seemingly gave it to Dueholm Convent. The convent gave it to Brune Erik Banner in 1435. Possibly it is the same manor named Clostergaardt in 1520 in Vester Jølby.

There are no listed prehistorics in the parish but there were once 12 grave hills. According to Pont. Atlas was at V. Jølby mark (field) a dolmen, Visti Stol. At Dragstrup was a kitchen midden and in a meadow close to Dragstrup Aa (water stream) was found a mould for a bronze sword.

Source: Trap Danmark, Thisted amt, 1961

photo 240807: stig bachmann nielsen Naturplan Foto & grethe bachmann

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