Granhults kyrka

Tree-ring dating suggests the timber used in the church was felled shortly after 1217, pointing to construction in the 1220s. The building owes its survival to the determination of local parishioners: when the church was formally decommissioned in 1837 following the merger of Granhult parish with its neighbour to form Nottebäck parish (which built its own larger church), villagers refused to allow the old church to be demolished. It regained its right to be used for worship in 1879. Later, in the late nineteenth century, the Kulturen museum in Lund considered buying and relocating the building to its open-air museum, but the plan was abandoned in favour of another church, Bosebo kyrka.

The exterior is entirely clad in wooden shingles, both walls and roof. The plan is simple: a short, broad nave, a narrower and lower chancel with a straight east end, and a sacristy added to the north in the 1600s. The south porch is thought to date from the 1700s, and the windows, too, are eighteenth-century insertions — traces of the smaller, higher medieval openings they replaced can still be seen in the walls. On the south side of the chancel is a hagioscope, a narrow slit with a sliding shutter that allowed those barred by the medieval church from receiving communion to observe Mass and pray facing the altar. Nearby stands a detached wooden bell-tower, likely from the early 1700s, with two crossed saddle roofs and a tall spire topped by a weathercock; an inscription reads Anno 1703, possibly recording its construction date.

Inside, the church is richly decorated with wall paintings from 1753 by Johan Christian Zschotzscher, depicting scenes from the Book of Revelation, including the Adoration of the Lamb and a vision of God enthroned in glory surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists. Beneath these later paintings, fragments of earlier medieval decoration survive on the triumphal arch and chancel wall. The sacristy has its own striking scheme from the 1600s, showing episodes from Genesis, and a further roundel of Christ as Salvator Mundi, attributed to Hans Sigismund Brachwagen in the early 1700s.

Among the church's furnishings are an altarpiece and crucifix by Torbern Röding from 1699, and a pulpit dated 1669, complete with an older sounding-board inscribed 1650, apparently reused from an earlier pulpit. The box pews are typical of seventeenth-century Swedish church interiors. Notable medieval objects include a fifteenth-century image of Saint Olof kept in a wall cupboard, and a wooden Madonna in late Gothic style dated to around 1475. A thirteenth-century bronze incense burner once used here is now held at the Småland Museum, while a medieval bell still hangs on the chancel's south wall.

The church's small mechanical organ dates from 1969, replacing an earlier harmonium, and stands in the south-east corner of the nave.