Church in Below, Fieldstone church in Below, Techentin, Germany

The Church in Below is a fieldstone church in the village centre of Below, part of Techentin, with a body dating to 1483; brick was used only for window and portal surrounds. Two pointed-arch windows with light stone surrounds sit left of the facade, and a tall tower clad in vertical wooden boards, built in 1542, carries a steep shingled spire. Inside, a dark beamed ceiling stands above a cream wall with reddish-brown scrollwork and three pointed-arch windows of green and yellow stained glass.

A chapel built by the von Below family around 1299, when its patronage passed to Sonnenkamp convent, was enlarged into the fieldstone church of 1483. The timber, shingled west tower was added in 1542. After a storm on 3 March 1793 damaged the roof, the west gable was rebuilt and the windows reglazed.

The village name Below comes from the de Belowe family, the locators who gave the settlement its name; knight Ywanus de Belowe witnessed the 1296 sale to Neuenkamp monastery. In 1369 a dispute between Below farmers and pastor Johann von Rostock was settled at Neuenkamp, fixing that the priest hold Mass in Below on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays and high feast days despite the poor footpath from Techentin. In 2021 the Easter service was recorded in the church and posted online for the congregations of Mestlin, Woosten and Benthen.

The building sits in a rural area and can be reached by local roads that pass through Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Visitors should expect that access may become more difficult during bad weather.

The wooden west tower was not added until 1542, long after the medieval fieldstone nave; the rest of the building's ground plan is thought to match the chapel of 1299. A 1793 storm damaged the roof, and inspectors noted the upper church floor was missing, with worm-eaten boards that held no nail.