Velhorst: A Manor Estate in Lochem, Netherlands
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Netherlands
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Dutch
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page6 sections
History
Velhorst is an estate in the municipality of Lochem, Gelderland, Netherlands; its manor house was commissioned in the seventeenth century by Diederik van de Wall.
Early estate and manor house
A charter from 1105 names Wenzo van Vrollehorst as a witness. He was probably connected with an estate at Lochem that included a manor and an associated farmstead. By 1313, the estate belonged to a member of the Van Putten family. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, people living at the farmstead used the surname Van Verlehorst. Diederik van de Wall acquired the estate in the seventeenth century and commissioned its manor house.
Inheritance and family residence
Johan op ten Noort purchased the estate in 1712 or 1714. In 1735 it passed to his daughter Petronella Cunira op ten Noort, who had married Ernst van Löben Sels, lord of Spaensweerd, in 1728. The house then passed by inheritance within the Van Löben Sels family. After Maurits Dirk van Löben Sels died in 1804, his widow Jaqueline Cornelia van der Muelen held the Velhorst properties. When she died in 1817, the estate passed to their son Jan Carel Jacob van Löben Sels, who died at the house in 1850.
Jan Carel Jacob’s daughter Isabella Sophia later held the property with her husband, J.A.A.C. ridder van Rappard. Their second child, Louis ridder van Rappard, was born at Velhorst in 1826 and became a major general. Isabella also died at the house, in 1890. The couple’s eldest daughter, Johanna Benjamina, married Jan Louis Anne Martens in 1848, bringing the house into the Martens family. Their grandson Anthony Henrik Martens lived at Velhorst and died there in 1952.
Conservation
J.C. Martens, the last member of his family to own Velhorst, left the estate to Natuurmonumenten, the Society for the Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands. The organization has owned it since 1972, and the estate is also a nature area. Its house and parkland are among 22 elements protected as national monuments under the Netherlands’ heritage system.
Remains
Estate buildings and grounds
Velhorst covers 318 hectares and includes the manor house, five tenant farms, and parkland; a carriage house is also part of the estate. The country house, known as De Velhorst, was enlarged in 1741 and again in 1819, reaching its present form through these later changes.
