Fänneslunda-Grovare kyrka

The church was built to serve two neighbouring parishes after their older medieval churches were judged too small and inadequate. Plans for a joint new church had circulated as early as the 1830s, but it was not until the 1870s that building work went ahead, on a site between the two villages that had not previously held a church of its own.

Designed by the architect Johan Fredrik Åbom, the building has a large nave with a narrower, lower, rounded chancel to the east, a substantial west tower with an open lantern, and a sacristy added to the north. The roof is covered in double-curved clay tile, laid over an earlier layer of wooden shingles, and the interior has an Empire-style character. In the 1930s the chancel received wall paintings by John Hedæus of Borås, depicting the Crucifixion and the Transfiguration.

Inside, the tall porch owes its height partly to alterations in 1963, when the ceiling and roof structure here were raised by around a metre. A flat, nut-brown lacquered wooden ceiling and a large hexagonal glass light fitting give the space its character, and the choir is said to be especially bright and well suited to singing.

Two Romanesque font bowls, both carved from sandstone in the late twelfth century, were brought from the two older churches. The Fänneslunda font shows English-influenced decoration of stars within circles and zigzag bands, while the Grovare font, attributed to the workshop of the stonemason Andreas, is carved with eight arcaded scenes including Michael's fight with the dragon and a baptism of Christ.

The organ, built in 1857 by the Gothenburg organ builder Johan Nikolaus Söderling, originally stood in Saleby church before being bought and moved here in 1896. It survives in largely unaltered condition, a rarity among Söderling's roughly 150 instruments, most of which have been lost or rebuilt. The ruins of the two abandoned medieval churches at Fänneslunda and Grovare were excavated and conserved in the 1930s and 1940s and can still be seen nearby.