Mellerup church / Mellerup kirke, Støvring herred, Randers amt

Mellerup kirke, stig bachmann nielsen, Naturplan.dk

The small church in Mellerup is an ashlar building with choir and nave and a porch at the south . The Romanesque sectiont, the choir and nave, are built in granite ashlars. In the choir gable, where the tip is rewalled with small grey-yellow Flensborg bricks, is a bricked-up Romanesque window, while other two are still in function, one on the north side of the nave, and one on the north side of the choir. Both original doors are kept,the north door is bricked-up, but visible as a niche out and inside, and on the outside equipped with rope windings in the linte. In front of the simple south door  a large porch was built in the late Middle Ages, which heavy walls, built in monk bricks, seem to reveal that this is the bottom of a late Gothic tower. The narrow choir arch is preserved inside with heavy unprofiled kragsten.

Mellerup kirke, stig bachmann nielsen, Naturplan.dk

The Mellerup crucifix

A Renaissance altar piece with the year 1621 and the initials M P T stands upon a granite communion table. Decorated pillars and side wings flank the big field which has a reproduction of Leonardo's "Last Supper". The altar piece earlier had the monograms of Eske Brock and Christence Viffert. The altar candelabres have the coat of arms of Mogens Kaas and Sidsel Friis and the year 1631. A Romanesque font with a rope decoration. A carved Renaissance pulpit, which has double pillars with decorations and intarsia and a carved year 1634, contemporary sounding board and entrance through the wall of the choir arch. A Gotic crusifix upon the wall , showing Christ with a crown of Thorns, restored in 1944 (the Mellerup crucifix). In the western gable a church bell without inscription, from the late Middle Ages; it was earlier in a bell-frame on the church yard. A church ship "Helene Charlotte" was in 1954 given to the church as a memory about a privateer from Mellerup.

At Mellerup is a sacred spring, Maren Tomesdatters kilde, which was used as a healing spring still around 1900.  

Listed prehistorics: 3 hills, Rytterhøj in the northern part of the parish, Tathøj, rather large with a water tank inside town and Stenshøj west of this.

Demolished or destroyed: 9 hills.

At Mellerup was found a settlement from early Roman Iron Age.

Source: Trap Danmark, Randers amt, 1963.
photo: grethe bachmann and stig bachmann  nielsen, Naturplan.dk