Fagerhults kyrka

The church's history stretches back to a wooden church built in the fourteenth century, destroyed by fire around the mid-1400s. Its replacement, also of timber, served the parish until the mid-eighteenth century, when it was superseded by a larger building said to have closely resembled the nearby Näshult church, with a separate bell tower topped by a helm-shaped spire. By the late nineteenth century that eighteenth-century church was judged inadequate, and the parish decided to build anew; the old building was demolished in 1901.

The current church was built in 1894 to revised plans dated 1892. Its design history is somewhat tangled: it is often attributed to the well-known Stockholm architect H. T. Holmgren, who was brought in to rework an earlier scheme by C. G. Löfquist after construction problems arose with the roof once the walls were already half built. Some accounts instead credit Löfquist as the true author, noting that his other churches tend toward a plainer, more provincial style than Holmgren's. The building was constructed in the neo-Gothic taste fashionable at the time, under the evident influence of Helgo Zettervall, the Lund cathedral architect, who signed off on the plans.

The church has a single-nave layout with a chancel and a former sacristy behind it to the east. The west tower, housing the main entrance, has paired sound openings, a clock, and a tall spire crowned with a cross. Projecting entrance sections break the north and south walls at the midpoint of the nave.

Inside, the open roof structure, pointed-arch windows, and consistently neo-Gothic fittings give the interior a unified character. A notable feature is the chancel arch and the richly carved screen separating the chancel from the former sacristy behind it, which has its own decorated vaulted ceiling.

Among the furnishings is an altar crucifix from Oberammergau and a neo-Gothic altarpiece incorporating an older altar cabinet dating from around 1475, depicting Saint Erasmus flanked by Saint Lars and Saint Birgitta. The pulpit, with its sounding board, dates from the same period as the church itself, and the font is of sandstone. The gallery organ, with its neo-Gothic façade, was built in 1897 by Åkerman & Lund; a smaller chancel organ, originally built in 1974 for Kolberga church near Oskarshamn, was acquired by the parish in 2008.