St. Ludgerus

St Ludgerus stands in Albersloh, a village joined to the town of Sendenhorst in the Warendorf district of North Rhine-Westphalia. The church belongs to the Ahlen deanery within the Diocese of Münster. Liudger, Bishop of Münster, founded the parish in the 9th century on a site first recorded as a bishop’s farm in 1171. Excavations in 1965 uncovered the remains of a small 12th-century aisleless church with a flat roof and a later tower built of rubble stone.

The present hall church was built at the end of the 13th century in bound system with two double bays and a square choir. At the east end of the south aisle an older section projects slightly, containing a tower. In 1962 the choir was remodelled while parts of the old choir were kept. The windows in the nave were altered in the late Gothic style. The north door is round-arched and the west door pointed. A trefoil canopy above the west door shelters a 1926 relief. In 2019 Bishop Dr Felix Genn of Münster consecrated a new altar here on the feast of Christ the King.

Inside, a plain Romanesque font from 1230 carries a simple palmette frieze. Removed panels from a carved pulpit of 1733 survive as reliefs on the walls. The organ, built in 1969 by Gebrüder Stockmann of Werl, has 27 stops on two manuals and pedal. The church’s five bells, cast by Wolter Westerhues in 1503, still ring in the sequence E flat, F, G.