Misterhults kyrka

A medieval timber church once stood in the western part of the old churchyard, with a stone sacristy, a lower chancel, and three windows containing late-medieval stained glass. Over the centuries it was altered several times, including enlargements in the 1690s and 1720s, before the parish decided in 1768 to replace it entirely. That older building was demolished in 1780, though its stone sacristy survives in the old churchyard and is still used today as a chapel.

The present church was built between 1777 and 1780 in the Gustavian style fashionable at the time, with the local landowner Claës Diedrich von Breitholtz as chief patron and financier. It was consecrated in 1790 by Bishop Jacob Axelsson Lindblom. The interior forms a single large hall beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling, with apse-like extensions on the north and south walls that originally held private galleries and separate entrances for the gentry families of the Misterhult and Virbo–Fårbo estates. A tower with a curved copper-clad cupola and lantern rises at the west end, and the sacristy occupies an extension to the north-east.

The building has seen various changes since, including repairs after lightning damage in 1839, redecoration in the nineteenth century, and a substantial renovation in the 1930s that altered some windows and converted one of the side galleries into a baptismal chapel. Further work took place in the 1970s and again in 2007–2008, when the pews were repainted, the vestry was renovated, and previously blocked chancel windows were reopened; services continued during this period in the adjoining Lillkyrkan.

Among the church's furnishings, the altar, pulpit and altarpiece depicting the baptism of Christ are attributed to the sculptor Jonas Berggren of Målilla. A striking triumphal crucifix hangs above the sacristy door; it is said to have come from the medieval church and to have been carved in a workshop associated with Linköping Cathedral in the late 1300s. Fragments of a late-medieval altar shrine, including small figures of apostles and saints, are mounted on the chancel's south wall, along with other statuettes including an unusual Madonna figure. Two wooden font bowls survive, one a gift from 1794. The church's three bells date from the 1500s and are said never to have needed recasting.

South of the tower stands a brick funerary chapel built in 1931, and in the old churchyard a stone burial vault occupies the site of the medieval church's former sacristy.