Ljungarums kyrka

The oldest surviving parts of the church are the sacristy, with its vaulted ceiling from around the mid-1200s, and the northern section of the nave, both traceable to a medieval predecessor on this site. The rest of the nave and the present three-sided chancel were added in 1746, when the building was extended by three and a half metres.

The church has been built up in stages using sandstone, limestone and field stone, and its exterior walls are roughcast, with roofs of single-curved clay tile. A timber porch was added to the south side shortly after the 1746 extension, but a more thorough rebuilding in 1830 saw this porch demolished and the main entrance moved to the west end of the nave, where a new two-storey timber porch was built; the old south doorway was reduced to a window.

The high altar was consecrated in 1524 by Bishop Hans Brask, a name familiar from many Swedish church histories of the period. The altarpiece itself, however, is a later addition: carved by Anders Ekeberg in 1703, it originally served Svarttorp's old church before coming to Ljungarum on deposit. Additional decoration includes an eighteenth-century oil painting by an unknown artist on the south wall, and an altar painting by the Jönköping artist Gunnar Zilo on the north wall.

Among the church's furnishings, the sacristy houses a fine sacrament cabinet thought to date from the 1400s, and an iron-bound wooden chest from the 1670s survives in the church's collection. A memorial tablet (epitaph) from around 1675 also hangs in the church, commemorating a local figure and his wife. The medieval font was structurally repaired in 1998, when its foot, shaft and bowl were joined together with an iron rod running through them.

South-west of the church, in the churchyard, stands a red-painted, timber-built bell tower said to have been erected or rebuilt in 1763, though records suggest an earlier bell tower stood on the same spot as far back as the 1600s. An excavation of its foundations in 1919 uncovered worked stone footings dated to the 1100s, hinting at even earlier activity on the site. Two bells hang within: the larger was recast in 1699 according to its inscription, and the smaller was cast in 1763 by the Jönköping founder Elias Fries Thoresson.

The present organ, installed in 1967 and built in Denmark, retains the façade of an earlier 1900 instrument, itself a replacement for an even earlier organ from 1836.