2.6 kmBillund Church
Modern town church nearby, a good contrast to Grene Church’s older layers and parish history
At first glance, Grene Church looks like a brick church from the great heathland period west of Billund. But inside the church room, older layers are still present: a Romanesque baptismal font from the old church and a pulpit carved with flowers, angel heads and foliage. This makes the church more than a replacement; it actually carries parts of its predecessor forward.
The church interior is whitewashed and simple, with a grey-beamed ceiling. In the chancel arch is a painted decoration from the time of construction with symbols of the evangelists and the Jesus monogram. From the outside, the round arches are clearly visible in both windows and portal, and the tower today functions as the entrance.
The churchyard tells its own local geography. When it was laid out, graves were distributed according to the location of the farms, so families from certain areas ended up in certain parts of the churchyard. It is a sober but rather precise map of a parish before Billund really began to grow.
The old Grene Church stood about 2 km to the southwest by Grene Å. On the old churchyard, the outline of the church is marked, and the place puts the present church into perspective: from here, both furnishings, the bell and parts of the parish's memory were moved to the new church.
On the east gable are two sandstone gravestones from the late 17th century. They commemorate bailiff Niels Clemmensen and Sophie Christensdatter and come from the old Grene Church, where they lay in the floor in front of the chancel.
The stones have been moved several times: from the floor in the old church to the porch of the new one and later out onto the gable, when the porch was replaced by the tower in 1991. The empty fields in the inscriptions show that the dates of death and age were never added.
In 1891, Grene Church did not get an actual tower, but a ridge turret over the west gable. The bell from the old Grene Church hung there, and the spire stood out with a copper roof, while the rest of the church had slate.
When the church was restored in 1991, the ridge turret was replaced by a real tower. The old spire now stands in the churchyard between the regular cemetery and the natural burial ground – like a detached remnant of the church’s first silhouette.
