Lackalänga kyrka

The church was built in the late twelfth century from roughly dressed granite, with a plinth and corner stones of cut sandstone. It originally had two square nave bays, a square chancel and an eastern apse, a timber-visible flat ceiling and lead-covered roofs. Tradition attributes the building work to a master mason named Carl Stenmester, though this cannot be independently confirmed.

In the early 1200s the apse was given a sandstone dome vault, and it was at this time that the church's finest feature was created: chancel wall paintings by an unknown master, attributed stylistically to the so-called Lilla Harrie group. At the centre of the apse is a Majestas Domini composition showing Christ enthroned on a rainbow within a mandorla, surrounded by the four evangelist symbols. Below stand four figures, including the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and, it is thought, a local bishop possibly identifiable as Andreas Sunesson. Further bands show the apostles and decorative wheel and drapery motifs, with the depiction of the disciples on the south side badly fragmented. The chancel vault also carries painted zigzag ribs and figures.

Around 1400 two porches were added, one to the south and one to the north, and the flat ceilings were replaced with brick Gothic cross-vaults. Unusually for a rural parish church, there appear to have been two doors leading into the chancel, suggesting it was treated as a particularly sacred space; traces of arch supports survive on the Romanesque sandstone columns of the triumphal arch.

Following the Reformation, in the late 1500s, the medieval paintings were limewashed over and a pulpit was installed; they were only rediscovered and revealed much later. The north porch was demolished in the seventeenth century and its doorway replaced with a window. A more drastic transformation came in 1850–51, when the west gable wall was removed and the church lengthened to double its original size; the south porch was also demolished and a new west tower with porch was built in its place.

The replacement tower proved too narrow for the bells to swing properly, and after some years of frustration a new tower was designed in 1875 and completed in 1888, clad in slate. The church gained heating in 1879 and was renovated again in 1889, when the nave received a metal roof (the apse kept its older copper covering) and a first organ was installed. Further renovation in 1952 lowered the nave floor to its medieval level, introduced new pews and electric lighting, uncovered the pulpit's original colours, and saw the organ rebuilt.