Grude kyrka

According to local tradition, an earlier wooden church once stood elsewhere in the parish, possibly at a site known as Kyrkoruyd, before the present stone building was constructed. Sources differ slightly on the church's earliest phase: one account describes a small square stone hall begun in the 1300s, while another dates the oldest surviving fabric to the late medieval period more generally, noting the original building had just a single door and window on its south side.

The church was altered several times over the centuries. In 1688 it was extended, with sources differing on the details—one describes an eastward extension of 7.5 metres with new south-facing windows, while another records that the chancel was enlarged and a north window added that same year. Further work in 1772 gave the building its rectangular plan. A notable addition came in 1815, when the flat ceiling was painted by Petter Hemlöf with clouds and gilded stars on a blue-green ground.

The church's most unusual feature, its tower, dates from 1891–1892, when a substantial renovation also rebuilt the sacristy and replaced the older bell frame and porch. Designs are attributed to the architect Fritz Eckert. Local tradition holds that the tower was originally intended to be taller and more pointed, but that funds ran out during construction, leaving it with its present blunt, truncated shape—a quirk that gives the building its memorable silhouette.

Inside, visitors can see a stone font dated to around 1200, among the oldest furnishings in the church and thought to have belonged to the earlier wooden predecessor. The altarpiece, painted in the mid-1920s, depicts Mary and John at the foot of the cross; an older altarpiece, once discovered in a barn, is now kept at a museum collection in Borås rather than in the church itself. The porch houses a sword hung in memory of a local quartermaster, and a decorative wooden chandelier from 1817 hangs on the stairway to the organ loft. The current mechanical organ, built in 1968, has nine stops across two manuals and pedal, replacing an earlier harmonium and a 1947 instrument.