Longs kyrka

The parish of Long was first recorded in writing in 1277, by which time it already comprised seven inhabited villages, suggesting the site had been settled for a considerable time before that. According to local tradition, the manor of Storegården in Long village was a royal estate in the Middle Ages, and it is said that the Swedish regent Birger Jarl died there, though this remains a matter of tradition rather than documented fact. His brother Eskil, a lawman, is said to have lived nearby at Lagmanstorp and, according to tradition, to have written down the older Västgöta law.

The medieval timber church that once stood here had a sacristy to the north and a porch to the west, and in 1743 its wooden chancel was replaced with a larger stone one. By the late 1800s the building had a whitewashed panelled exterior and tiled roofs, with a separate bell frame holding two bells standing to the northeast.

The current church, built in 1897 to designs by the architect F. A. Wahlström, is a neo-Gothic building of stone construction on a hewn granite plinth, comprising a nave, a narrower five-sided chancel to the east and a west tower. A major renovation took place in 1947 under the architect Axel Forssén, when electric heating and lighting replaced the old stoves, the nave floor was renewed, and the gallery was widened with new rooms built beneath it. Further restoration work followed in 1961 and 1996.

Among the furnishings, the church has two font basins; the older, dating from the early 1200s, is one of several fonts of similar age found within the former parish. The pulpit dates from the early 1700s. The church has had two organs: one built by Nordfors & Co installed in 1912, replaced by an instrument from Smedmans Orgelbyggeri in 1976.

The churchyard is enclosed by a dry-stone retaining wall topped with a hedge. Its oldest dated gravestone is from 1840, and 26 limestone grave crosses from the 1600s and 1700s stand along the inside of the wall. A memorial to victims of a cholera epidemic in the 1860s, originally set outside the churchyard, now stands within its boundary following a later extension. One late-19th-century gravestone is carved in the shape of a tree stump, with its inscription set on a stone panel resembling a scroll of parchment resting on top.