Gangsted church/ Gangsted kirke, Voer herred, Aarhus amt.

                                                                              

West of the village lies Gangsted church in a low rise in a highplaced open agricultural land in the central section of Voer herred. The churchyard is surrounded by a granite boulder dike. In the western side of the churchyard is a burial chamber from 1948. Earlier was a church barn northwest of the tower. 

Gangsted church has a Romanesque choir and nave. It is built in  rough-carved granite ashlars upon a bevelled plinth. Inside the church are fieldstone-walls and a few ashlars in the west-end of the nave. The north door and some windows are bricked, and outside the south door was in the Middle Ages built a porch in granite and half-timber. A bricked bench is kept in the room of the porch.

Both doors have very impressive rectangular lintels. One early window is kept in the north side of the choir and another re-opened in 1900. At the gable of the porch is a lintel in grey-red granite. The tower is Late Gothic in monk bricks and re-used granite ashlars, and it has a  pyramid roof and a weather vane from 1782  (1893?)with initials I S C M I.  The tower had originally stepped gables north-south. The northwest corner of the tower rests upon a large fieldstone with marks after the stonemason's chisel.

Inside the church has the nave a flat ceiling, and the choir and tower are overvaulted since the Late Gothic period.The church had main reparations in 1794,1807, 1832 and a large restoration in the middle of the 1980s. The floor got black-greywhite tiles in 1907. In 1987-88 were found fragments of frescoes made after the Middle Ages (black drapery) In 1932 a glass painting was made in the west of the tower room.

                                                                             
Interior:
The altarpiece is Baroque ab. 1600, a carved work, given by Gedske Lucasdatter. A lightning in the church 1894 damaged the altarpiece which got a new painting in the big field in 1895, a copy of Carl Bloch's "Julenat" (Christmas Night). The pulpit is new, from ab. 1800 in oak and with painted figures, the granite font is Romanesque with  lion figures and foliage. (Horsens-type).

Parking place reserved the church singer and the priest.

                                                                                                                                                       
 A brass money box, a bell from 1837 cast by Carl Frederik Weiss, Horsens   A memory tablet from 1695 with the names Bertel Fædder, Laurits Friis and their wife Gedske Lucasdatter (+ 1695). A memory tablet over 2 killed soldiers from 1864. A coffin crucifix from 1650-1700.  3 cast iron crosses from 1854 in church yard. .











Tyrrestrup see blog:  Søvind church , owner today: Jens Harder




 source: Danmarks Kirker. National Museet.

photo: grethe bachmann 
+ Google Earth.