Ferring church/ Ferring kirke, Vandfuld herred, Ringkøbing amt.

Ferring church, ab. 10 km west of Lemvig
Ferring sogn, Vandfuld herred, Ringkøbing amt.

A simple church , beautifully situated in a wind-swept and treeless piece of country close to the North Sea. The view from the sea cliff is magnificent. There is a special atmosphere over the church yard with the white-painted fences , and the church has some unique and very early Romanesque frescoes. Ferring church was built ab. 1125-1175, it has a Romanesque choir and nave and a Gothic tower. The choir is built in granite ashlars . In the southside is a leprosy-window and in the northside a bricked-up Romanesque window. It seems that the walls of the nave were re-walled already in the Middle Ages, they are in raw granite boulder with ashlars in the corners and spread ashlars in the bottom section of the wall. In the north side a window in Romanesque shape and a bricked-up door. The tower room functions as a porch, and it has like the choir a rib-less vault. From the tower room is access to a spiral staircase. The nave has a beamed ceiling and on each side of the triumph wall is a pointed arch altar niche.


frescoes, click to enlarge

All frescoes are from the 1200s, but later re-painted. Altar piece from 1638, restored in 1912. The small Gothic crucifiks of the church is now placed upon the altar piece. A Romanesque granite font. A pulpit from 1640 with a sounding board . In the nave an early gothic Madonna and a late Gothic Christ-figure. The bell with inscription is from 1469. On the National Museum is a late medieval iron-bound coffin, which in 1894 was at the church loft. Upon the church yard several characteristic West Jutland graves with white-painted fences.




Names in the Middle Ages and 1600s:
Ferring (1330-48 Færing); Borup (ab. 1525 Boerop); Bakhuse (1683 Bach); Brændgård (ab. 1525 Brændhe gord); Juelsgård (1688 Juulsgaard); Ø. and Nye Lund ( 1595 Lundt, 1844 Landgaarde); Korsled (1683 Kaarszleed); Midsommerbjerg (1664 Midsommersbierg).

Listed prehistorics: the large Hesthøj at Bovbjerg Lighthouse. According to a priest report from 1638 was close to this another hill Knudstehøj, and at Ferring village were possibly a couple of hills. - At Bovbjerg was examinated a settlement from early Roman Iron Age.


Bovbjerg Lighthouse

Bovbjerg (1434 Bomberch), 1638 Boubierge) does not look especially impressing in spite of the 46 m higher than sea level, since the terrain rises gradually, but seen from the sea shore it is an impressing sight with its rugged shapes and deep ravines. The storms have taken much of the cliff. Earlier the farmers saw their fields disappear and had to move longer and longer inland. From 1790-1874 the cliff had moved inland with ab. 160 m. In order to secure the lighthouse and its surounddings they began in 1909 to build groynes. The work was difficult, since there was no foreshore, the cement blocks (for each groyne ab. 2000 á four and a half tons) had to be hoist down a railway made down the cliff. After the building of the groynes Bovbjerg's northern section had been secured, and the sea has now deposited so much sand that there is now a broad foreshore.



The Danish painter Jens Søndergaards Museum at Bovbjerg was after his death in 1957 established in his summer house close to the cliff and taken over by Klinkby kommune; it has a collection of his paintings; outside the house is a male figure in cement.


Ferring, the North Sea.

Source: Trap Danmark, Ringkøbing amt, 1965.


photo Ferring kirke 2003: grethe bachmann