Bredstrup church/ Bredstrup kirke, Elbo herred, Vejle amt.

Bredstrup kirke, 5 km northwest of Fredericia, photo: Google Earth.

Bredstrup church has a late Romanesque choir and nave, a late Gothic tower to the west and a porch to the south from the second half of the 1800s;  it is now furnished as a burial chapel. The late Romanesque building is mostly built in raw and cleaved granite, but with a sligthly hollow, bevelled plinth and corner ashlars. Upon the north east corner of the choir-plinth is a small male head. From original details are kept the bricked-up south door with two granite columns. The north door is only vaguely visible like a round arch window in the north wall of the nave. The choir and nave have inside flat beamed ceilings, and the choir arch is re-newed after the whole triumph wall was removed for years. The late Gothic tower has a cross-vaulted bottom room with flat-curved wall niches, and the pointed tower arch is bricked-out with a door, since they in present time, probably ab. 1920, placed the main entrance here. The tower has smooth gables east-west, and the peepholes to the north and south are flat-curved, to the east and west point-curved.  The outer walls of the tower are very bricked - the iron numbers 1870 and 1871 probably refer to these works. From this period is also the little porch to the south, now a burial chapel (in 1964).

Interior The altar piece is from ab. 1700 in a simple bruskbarok (DK 1630-1660) with winding columns and a painting from 1920 by N. Larsen Stevns. An older altar painting from the 1800s is placed in the burial chapel. The woodwork of the altar piece was repaired in 1923. Altar candelabres with a thin baluster handle upon a heavy foot and with a flat, mussel fluted light bowl, like the ones in Vejlby church (Vejle amt). They were given in 1694 by Lars Knudsen and Anne Pedersdatter in Kongsted Torp. A Romanesque granite font with a smooth basin upon a square foot. A South German dish ab. 1575. Another font with arcades upon the basin and a square foot stands in the tower room. It probably origins from Kongsted church, which was demolished in 1661. The pulpit in Renaissance from the beginning of the 1600s has biblical reliefs and upon the corners are evangelists and virtuous figures. A closed parish priest stool from ab. 1700 in the south side of the choir has a sawn acanthus work like the stool in Vejlby church. At the pulpit hangs a plaster copy of the Herlufsholm-crucifix. A gallery upon wooden columns from ab. 1730-40. Iron bound money block from the 1700s. Upon the loft lies a defect model of a threemaster. Bell from 1919, Smithske Støberier, Aalborg. Organ 1894.

Upon the church yard is an artificial grave hill with a classisistic memorial for justitsråd, mayor Hans Buhl (+ 1814).


A church in Kongsted, which according to accounts was small and without a tower and repaired in 1653, was destroyed by the Swedish soldiers in 1657 during the siege of Frederiksodde. It was later demolished acc. to the wish of the residents in 1661.  Bredstrup church was also damaged but was repaired.

Østedgård . Henning Volstrup wrote himself of Ø. in 1550, but he had probably already sold the farm to Niels Skeel of Nygård (+ 1561), who in 1548 let the farm be judged to himself on the Judicial Thing. His widow Karen Krabbe (+ 1586) exchanged in 1578 Ø. to the Crown, who in 1620 laid it out to a Captain's Farm for Johan Mor and then for Frederik Gans, whose widow married herredsfoged Thomes Terkildsen, who in 1626 got the farm as a tenant, in 1648 she transferred the farm to her son Axel Gans, who owned it still in 1653.

In 1688 jægermester in Jutland Gerhard Brockdorff (+ 1711) got a life's letter on Ø. and built the main building. In the 1700s the owner was Jobst Gerhard von Scholten, after his death in 1786 Ø. was by the Crown put on auction and sold to manager at Hvidkilde Rasmus Ejlersen. Later owners: Hartvig Fr. Wedel Jarlsberg, Ole Kongstad, Jens Lange of Rødkilde, købmand Rasmus Hansen, Heinrich August Lorentzen, Jørgen Rudolf Bech, P. Vang Lauridsen, Otto Friis Beck, Emil Pontoppidan Christiani, Dethlef Jürgensen, in 1954-1985: Henning Sally; 1985-1995: Atfed A/S / Sørn Nymark; 1995-) Nyma A/S / Sørn Nymark

The whitewashed main building is listed in class B.

Kongsted The southern section of the parish with the villages Kongsted and Torp was earlier a parish called Kongsted parish, which was an annex of Bredstrup, but in 1661 was requested that Kongsted church could be broken down and the congregation seek to Bredstrup church, since the Swedish soldiers had damaged and actually demolished the church in Kongsted; they had used the stones for their huts in the camps at Bredstrup village. Upon the site of Kongsted church are still seen few rests of wallwork. A memorial was set up in 1953. The baptismal font from Kongsted is in the garden of Bredstrup vicarage. Kongsted was laid under Bredstrup parish not until 1884. In the parish were also parts of the villages Rerslev and Husby.

There are no listed prehistorics in the parish but there were 35 hills, which mainly were placed south of Kongsted and in the northernest part of the parish, one hill contained a hellekiste (stone cist).

At Kongsted mølle (mill) was examined a settlement from early Roman Iron Age.
 
Names from the Middle Ages: Bredstrup (ab. 1330 Brestorp); Stallerup (1452 Stallerup); Kongsted (ab. 1330 Kungesteth); Torp (1541 Torp, 1591 Kongstedrop); Østedgård (1575 Ødstedt).

Source: Trap Danmark, Vejle amt, 1964.    

photo: from Google Earth.