Skurups kyrka

The church was built in the twelfth century as a Romanesque basilica-style hall church, with thick walls of granite and limestone, an apse and a chancel. It was vaulted in the fourteenth century, and extended westwards in the mid-1500s. Only the chancel, apse and parts of the nave still date from the original medieval build, since the crossing arms were added in the 1850s under the architect Carl Georg Brunius, when the older central section, including three painted vaults, was demolished.

Beneath the church lies a crypt, said to have been built at the expense of Gabriel Jacobsen Sparre of Svaneholm Castle and his wife Elisabeth Trolle, who were themselves buried there. The crypt also contains the grave of Rutger Macklean (1742–1816), a notable landowner and agricultural reformer. The Sparre family held the right of patronage over the church from 1584 until such rights were abolished by law in 1921, entitling them to a share of church income in exchange for maintaining the building and appointing its priest and sexton.

Inside the chancel and apse are medieval wall paintings attributed to the so-called Snårestad group, depicting scenes from the life of Christ, the evangelists, apostles, saints and martyrs, along with images of the Virgin and the infant Jesus. These were later overpainted by another artist in the 1400s. The pulpit, dated to 1605, was a gift from Christian Gyllenstierna of Stjärnsholm and, like several memorial stones and epitaphs in the church, reflects the patronage of the local nobility.

The tower, with its stepped gables, was raised in height during the 1850s; earlier accounts suggest a square defensive tower may once have stood on the site before being demolished in the 1500s. Three bells hang in the church: the great bell and the so-called peace bell, both cast in Copenhagen and donated by Gabriel Sparre in 1595, and a later prayer bell cast in Ystad in 1955.

The church's pneumatic organ dates from 1906, built by Eskil Lundén of Gothenburg, replacing an earlier instrument from 1862; it was renovated in 1983.