Wijnendale Castle: A Medieval Water Castle in Belgium
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Belgium
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Belgian, Duchy of Cleves, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Wijnendale Castle is a historic water castle in Belgium, located near Torhout in West Flanders. According to later chronicles, Count Robert the Frisian founded the original castle at the end of the eleventh century, while its earliest contemporary mention places it at the center of military operations in 1127. The present complex is largely a nineteenth-century reconstruction in a Neo-Gothic style, but its history reaches back to a medieval fortified residence of the Counts of Flanders.
Comital residence and military stronghold
From the middle of the twelfth century, Wijnendale became a regular residence of the Counts of Flanders. Count Philip of Alsace was recorded there with his court adviser in 1168, and a chaplain was present by 1187, indicating that the castle had a chapel. The surrounding woodland served as a hunting ground for the comital family and its guests. Wijnendale also hosted political consultations, including the alliance treaty that Guy of Dampierre concluded with King Edward I of England in 1297.
Inheritance transferred the castle to the Counts of Namur in 1298. Count John I of Namur received Wijnendale and its lordship, which his father Guy of Dampierre had established about two decades earlier. The castle endured heavy sieges in 1302 during the Battle of the Golden Spurs, a conflict connected with the struggle for control of Flanders, and again in 1325 during the Coastal Flanders revolt. It was rebuilt after both attacks. The Counts of Namur continued to reside there regularly until 1366. Blanche of Namur probably grew up at Wijnendale and met her future husband, King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden, there in 1334.
Burgundian and Ravenstein ownership
After a period of neglect, Count John III of Namur sold Wijnendale and its lordship to the Burgundian duke John the Fearless in 1407. In 1410, John transferred the property to his son-in-law, Adolphus IV of Cleves-Mark, as security for the dowry of his daughter Marie. A dynastic inheritance division in 1463 then brought Wijnendale to the Lords of Ravenstein, a junior branch of the dukes of Cleves.
Adolphus of Cleves-Ravenstein and his son Philip of Cleves transformed Wijnendale into a prestigious hunting residence for princes and nobles. Philip the Fair later called it the finest country residence in Flanders. The castle’s aristocratic history also includes a fatal accident. Duchess Mary of Burgundy died after falling from her horse during a hunt at Wijnendale in 1482. War followed between her widower, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, and rebel forces supported by Philip of Cleves. German troops damaged the castle and farm buildings and burned the stables in 1488. Philip repaired the damage and enlarged both the castle and its courtyard.
After losing his Castle of Enghien in 1523, Philip spent much of his time at Wijnendale and continued to receive guests there. An inventory made after his death in 1528 described a three-storey castle with more than fifty rooms, including many guest rooms. The property later returned to the senior branch of the dukes of Cleves. They did not live there permanently, but used it to accommodate distinguished guests such as Emperor Charles V and his sister, the regent Mary of Hungary.
Wars, dynastic disputes, and rebuilding
Religious wars and the revolt against Spanish rule damaged Wijnendale in 1578. Part of the castle was destroyed, including the keep, the principal fortified tower of a medieval castle. The earliest known images of Wijnendale date from this period: it appears in a detail of Pieter Pourbus’s 1568 map of the Bruges Free, and in an anonymous drawing from 1612 that was formerly, probably incorrectly, attributed to Jan Brueghel.
The childless death of Duke John William of Cleves in 1609 drew Wijnendale into the War of the Jülich-Cleves succession, a dispute over the inheritance of territories held by the Cleves dynasty. The 1614 Treaty of Xanten assigned the lordship to Wolfgang William, Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, although the elector of Saxony contested the settlement. Emperor Rudolf II had invested Christian II of Saxony as lord of Wijnendale in 1610, and the elector took possession of the castle. A judgment of the Privy Council in Brussels finally assigned Wijnendale to Wolfgang William in 1634.
The dukes of Palatinate-Neuburg held Wijnendale from 1634 to 1669 and again from 1690 to 1795. Between 1669 and 1690, Duke Philip William temporarily transferred it to the princes of Schwarzenberg as security for the final division of the Jülich-Cleves inheritance, regulated by the 1666 Treaty of Cleves. During Louis XIV’s incursions into Flanders, French troops occupied Wijnendale in 1668 and 1675, while Spanish forces occupied it in 1676, 1689, and 1690. In 1690, the French army blew up part of the castle, destroying the bridge, chapel, and prison. Duke John William cleared the debris and rebuilt the castle in 1699 and 1700.
On 28 September 1708, the castle stood near the Battle of Wijnendale during the War of the Spanish Succession, a European conflict caused by competing claims to the Spanish monarchy. French and Allied forces fought there, with about 4,000 deaths among the French and Spanish forces and 900 dead and wounded on the Allied side. The castle itself suffered relatively little damage in the battle.
Estate administration and the nineteenth-century reconstruction
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Wijnendale was the residence of the governor of the lordship. The dukes of Palatinate-Neuburg remained in their German castles and operated the property as a revenue-producing estate. Timber from the surrounding forests supplied about half of the lordship’s income, while land and mill leases, fishing rights, and toll rights provided additional revenue. Torhout served as the administrative and judicial center. From the middle of the eighteenth century, Duke Charles Theodore of Neuburg-Sülzbach promoted paved roads in West Flanders, with Wijnendale-Torhout as a transport and trade junction.
French Revolutionary troops invaded the Austrian Netherlands in 1792 and ended the feudal legal order. Charles Theodore moved the household furnishings and archives to his residences in Düsseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich. The French state seized the lordship and castle as national property. An unconfirmed tradition says that the forester then operated the castle as an inn under the sign Au Château de Wynendale. In 1811, Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops completely destroyed the castle, leaving ruins.
The estate was publicly sold in 1825, during the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to the Walloon industrial group Lefebvre-Dehults, which cleared the Wijnendale forest. After the bankruptcy of its financier, banker Isidore Warocqué, the property was sold again. Brussels banker and insurer Josse-Pierre Matthieu acquired it in 1833. Between 1837 and 1852, he rebuilt the castle while incorporating the surviving part of the late-medieval right wing.
In 1877, Matthieu’s son Joseph Louis commissioned Brussels architect Félix Laureys to give the complex a romanticized medieval appearance. The gatehouse was demolished and rebuilt, two high towers were added, and a new approach avenue extended the paved road to Torhout. These changes created the castle’s deliberately militaristic nineteenth-century character. The design may have drawn inspiration from the slender stair towers shown in a print by Sanderus.
Wijnendale in modern Belgian history
On 25 May 1940, after Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, King Leopold III held his last wartime discussion at Wijnendale with Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot, Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, Interior Minister Arthur Vanderpoorten, and Minister of National Defence General Denis. Leopold refused to leave Belgium with the ministers to continue the war abroad. As commander-in-chief of the army, he intended to remain with his troops and be taken prisoner. His decision later contributed to the Royal Question, the Belgian political crisis over his conduct during the German invasion and occupation.
The Matthieu family, known as Matthieu de Wynendaele since 1953, remains the owner and occupies part of the castle. In 1983, Jean-Jacques Matthieu de Wynendaele opened part of the estate and castle as a museum in cooperation with the municipal authorities of Torhout. The museum ceased opening to visitors after 29 September 2021. Wijnendale Forest became a protected landscape in 1980, the castle was protected as a monument in 1982, and the surrounding area was designated a protected village landscape.
Remains
The moated castle
Nineteenth-century castle complex
Wijnendale is a romanticized moated castle, or water castle, meaning a fortified residence surrounded wholly or partly by water-filled defenses. Its present form is largely the result of the reconstruction carried out between 1837 and 1852 and the redesign commissioned in 1877. The complex includes a rebuilt gatehouse, a brick entrance bridge, and two high towers flanking the castle. An approach avenue aligns with the paved road to Torhout, while the nineteenth-century alterations give the buildings a deliberately military appearance.
Medieval northern wing
A portion of the northern wing survives from the fifteenth century. It corresponds to the late-medieval right wing incorporated into Matthieu’s nineteenth-century rebuilding. The oldest wing is occupied by the owners. Other parts of the complex contain the former museum spaces, which are not publicly accessible following the end of museum openings after September 2021.
Bridge, chapel, and keep
The castle’s defenses and buildings reflect repeated destruction and rebuilding. The keep was burned during the damage of 1578. French demolition in 1690 destroyed the earlier bridge, chapel, and prison, after which a new brick access bridge was built during the rebuilding of 1699 and 1700. The complex was later damaged in 1690, reduced to ruins in 1811, and reconstructed in the nineteenth century. These successive phases account for the mixture of medieval survival and later medievalizing design visible in the present castle.
Woodland estate and associated buildings
The castle stands in the wooded surroundings of Wijnendale Forest, about 3 to 3.5 kilometres from Torhout. The estate park contains a nineteenth-century icehouse and greenhouses, both incorporated into the former museum circuit. It also includes the Chapel of Our Lady of Wijnendale. Together, these buildings and the surrounding woodland form the surviving physical setting of the castle estate, whose earlier uses combined residence, hunting, administration, and management of forest and agricultural revenues.
