Sterup Church

St. Laurentius in Sterup stands in the gently rolling Angeln countryside of Schleswig-Holstein. The church was built about 1230 as a simple brick chapel with a rectangular nave, smaller and plainer than most of its neighbours. A freestanding medieval bell tower was replaced in 1887 by the present neogothic tower designed by Richard Plüddemann, its eight-sided spire rising 52 metres above the fields. The west front shows the tower’s stepped buttresses and clock faces above the louvred bell openings. Inside, the nave and choir are covered by plain board ceilings, the old chorbogen removed in 1782. The church is worth visiting for its unusually rich furnishings from the 13th to the 17th centuries. The granite font, carved in Seeland about 1200, carries a rare relief of the Adoration of the Magi and the Baptism of Christ. A finely carved figure of St Laurentius, holding a book and the gridiron of his martyrdom, dates from the late 13th or early 14th century. The high altar is a late-gothic winged retable of about 1500 with 58 figures in the Crucifixion scene, the largest such group in Schleswig-Holstein. The side wings hold the twelve apostles, their 19th-century labels occasionally mismatched to their attributes. Visitors enter through the tower porch into a single rectangular room lit by small romanesque windows on the north wall. The restored colour scheme of 1836 reappeared under later layers in 1972, revealing the original paint on the rood beam: Moses with the tablets and Christ flanked by apostles. A second altar of the same period shelters a carved Anna selbdritt group, while a late-gothic triumphal cross hangs above the rood beam. The pulpit of 1626, attributed to the Ringerink circle, carries statues of Christ and apostles with the Apostles’ Creed in Low German beneath. On the west wall the hufeisen-shaped gallery holds a 1743 organ rebuilt in 2010.