Irnich Castle

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Irnich Castle, south wing with gate construction

The castle Irnich is in the east of the village Schwerfen , a district of Zülpich in North Rhine-Westphalia Euskirchen .

Probably originating from a manor with Roman roots in the 14th century , it has been in the hands of various local noble families over the course of its history before it was bought by the current owner in the 1980s. He carefully restored it and is now using it for agricultural purposes.

description

Schematic floor plan of the castle, as it was around 1900

The four-wing moated castle is a closed complex and has an irregular, square floor plan. It used to be surrounded on all sides by moats , which nowadays have fallen dry but are still clearly visible in the terrain. A group of buildings resembling a bailey can be seen on a picture in Codex Welser from 1723, but it had completely disappeared by the beginning of the 19th century.

Today's castle complex consists of the residential wing in the south and an adjoining gate on the south-east corner. In the east and west are stable buildings, of which the east was built in the 19th century over an older building from 1566. The west wing is also medieval , only its outside - the former curtain wall - is of older origin. The north wing is a half-timbered barn with a late Gothic tower on the northeast corner. This has two storeys and was around six meters high at the beginning of the 20th century. Its roughly semicircular floor plan has a diameter of about five meters. The tower, on which subsequent changes can be easily recognized through differences in the masonry, perhaps had an equivalent on the southwest corner of the residential building.

The gate has a round arched passage. A preserved chain roller and a square cover prove that access was previously via a drawbridge . A rarity can be found in an embrasure to the right of the gate passage: There is still an original bounce block that used to absorb the kickback of the arquebuses common in the 15th century . The edges and openings of the gateway are framed by regular red sandstone blocks that stand out well against the yellow plastered outer facade of the south wing. Above the archway is the coat of arms of the mountains of Blens , which points to a construction time before 1491. A sandstone lion bearing the coat of arms of the von Holtorp family was later placed above it. This is flanked on both sides by semicircular weir core that rest on consoles made of red sandstone. They used to be taller than they are today, but were cut in the 18th century and, together with the small central gable , behind which a dovecote is hidden, and the gate building, were given a shared hipped roof .

To the west of the gateway is the residential building of Irnich Castle, the outer facade of which shows a large cross-frame window and the risalit protruding console of a former toilet dungeon . The building consists of three roughly equal parts from different times. The eastern third adjoining the gate seems to date from the 16th century. This is indicated by a simple sandstone fireplace from that time. The middle part of the building in its current form dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby older building fabric was included in the construction. The castle kitchen used to be located on its ground floor. The western third of the residential wing is the oldest part of the castle complex and used to be the actual castle house. The part used today as a barn was built by the von Irnich family in the 15th century at the latest. Inside there are approaches and consoles of a six- yoke and two aisled groin vault , which probably rested on pillars . A Gothic lintel built into today's east wing originally comes from this part of the residential building.

history

Irnich Castle is probably the successor to a Celtic- Roman manor that was founded near the Roman road Cologne-Zülpich-Trier and continued to exist in Franconian times. A castle developed from the farm in the 14th century, which gave its name to a noble family, because in 1373 a Daniel von Eirnich (Irnich) sealed a certificate. He was the advisor to the Duke of Jülich and the bailiff of Euskirchen and at the same time the owner of the Great Castle in Kleinbüllesheim . In 1454 the castle of Muil von Irnich was married to the wealthy Berge zu Blens and Dürffenthal family. She allegedly had the property rebuilt in 1484 and sold the knight's seat , which was then eligible for parliament, in 1491 to the Bock von Lichtenberg.

In 1555 the complex came to the von Holtorp family by marriage, who remained in their possession until 1789. In 1723 the castle was shown in the Codex Welser and the illustration shows it in good condition. Later it was owned by the Lords of Mosbach, called Breidenbach. After the Irnich branch of the male line had died out, the heir daughter Adriane von Mosbach brought the property to her husband, Baron Franz Joseph von Proff, at the end of the 18th century . His heirs sold the property to the current owner, the Leisten family, who had previously been tenants of the castle for many years.

literature

  • Paul Clemen (ed.): The art monuments of the district of Euskirchen . L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1900 ( Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz . Volume 4, Section 4), pp. 94–96 ( online ).
  • Harald Herzog: castles and palaces. History of the typology of the noble seats in the Euskirchen district . 2nd Edition. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7927-1226-1 , pp. 295-299.
  • Harald Herzog: walls, towers and ruins. A hiking guide to castles and palaces in the Euskirchen district . Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7927-1153-2 , pp. 28-30.
  • Dirk Holterman, Harald Herzog: The Euskirchen Castle Tour. Cycling between Erft and Eifel . Rau, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-7919-0750-6 , p. 86 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c P. Clemen: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Euskirchen , p. 96.
  2. ^ H. Herzog: walls, towers and ruins , p. 30.
  3. ↑ a b H. Herzog: walls, towers and ruins , p. 29.
  4. ↑ H. Herzog: Burgen und Schlösser , p. 295.
  5. ↑ D. Holterman, H. Herzog: Die Euskirchener Burgenrunde , p. 86.
  6. ↑ a b Walther Zimmermann , Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , p. 573.
  7. ↑ P. Clemen: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Euskirchen , p. 94.

Coordinates: 50 ° 38 ′ 38.1 ″  N , 6 ° 38 ′ 12.2 ″  E