Husterknupp
| Husterknupp | ||
|---|---|---|
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg, moth | |
| Conservation status: | Burgstall | |
| Place: | Grevenbroich - Frimmersdorf | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 2 '23 " N , 6 ° 33' 33" E | |
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The Husterknupp is a defunct Lower Rhine tower hill castle (Motte) near Frimmersdorf , a current district of Grevenbroich in the Rhine district of Neuss in North Rhine-Westphalia .
The castle was the ancestral seat of the Counts of Hochstaden . The name comes from the Rhenish dialect. "Huster" is the abbreviation of the word "Hochstadener" (Huh = high), while "Knupp" is the name for a hill, so the Huster Knupp is the Hochstaden hill.
Dig
From 1949 to 1951 the moth "Husterknupp" was excavated in three large sections . This was about 1 km east of the former town of Morken-Harff . Both the place Morken and the Motte had to give way to the advancing lignite mining of the Frimmersdorf -Süd pit owned by Roddergrube AG (most recently the Garzweiler opencast mine ). The moth lay in the Erft valley in a loop of the Erft between the place Frimmersdorf in the former Grevenbroich district and Morken in the former Bergheim (Erft) district . In documents and in oral tradition the population knew that it was once the ancestral seat of the Rhenish noble family of the Counts of Hochstaden.
According to evidence of the finds, ceramics, weapons and other objects, the "Husterknupp" moth was founded in the last quarter of the 9th century. During this time the Vikings threatened the settlements of the Erft valley, on July 8th, 881 the abbot of the imperial abbey Kornelimünster Eginhard was murdered near Bergheimerdorf . During this time, an ancestor of Hochstaden left his previous farm and built a fortified court complex or Niederungsburg on what was then the Erftlauf.
1st construction phase (flat settlement)
Remains of five wooden houses of the low-rise settlement in stick construction could still be found, the floor plan of the settlement had an inner diameter of 45 m, the houses resulted in an open courtyard with a waste pit in the middle. The main house was preserved on one long side with the post, the threshold bars and the planks of the wall filling up to the eaves height. The house had a vestibule with a length of 11.50 m, a width of 5.70 m and consisted of four rooms.
2nd construction phase (Motte)
This first flat settlement was likely to have existed until the middle of the 10th century, after which the complex was converted into a two-part moth. The area was divided into a core castle and an outer castle , each of which was surrounded by its own moat . The core castle was raised by a steeply sloping earth platform, which represented the core moth and provided space for new wooden buildings. The old main house remained in the area of the new outer bailey, which was also slightly raised by an earthfill. The other houses in the old flat settlement were given up. The outer bailey was bounded by a new, larger moat to the northeast.
3rd construction phase (Hochmotte)
At the beginning of the 11th century the high moth was erected, which occupied the area of the old core moth and most of the old outer bailey. The fortified house of the lord of the castle, a residential tower , was built on the Hochmotte, and the farm buildings and houses for the other castle residents and cattle stables were built on the new outer bailey.
The new outer bailey was enlarged in a north-easterly direction and brought up to the loop of the Erftlauf. This loop was expanded into a ditch and thus included in the new defense system around Hochmotte and the outer bailey. A drain should have been created on the east side, so that a water protection was available. The average width of the trench was 6 m. The diameter of the high moth was 54 m, the height of the moth about 6.40. The horseshoe-shaped bailey on the northeast side of the hill had an average width of 45 m and a length of 90 m. The moat of the outer bailey was 10 m wide, the Erftlauf was 18 m wide and about 1.50 m deep.
The outer bailey was fortified with a palisade behind the moat and a deep battlement at the rear . The palisade was later replaced by a 4.50 m wide wood / earth wall, the core of which consisted of a square post frame made of mighty oak posts. Further piles were probably driven into the squares as supports for the longitudinal and transverse timbers as well as for the earth filling in the frame core and for the filling of the inner wall slope. A row of rectangular piles, about 1.50 - 2 m behind the inner piles, existed as a boundary and support for the inner wall slope towards the inside of the castle.
Expansion of the Motte into a stone castle
The Motte was destroyed between 1192 and 1244. In 1192, lengthy battles for the castle are reported for the first time. The moth must have been completely destroyed in these battles. In 1244, Konrad von Hochstaden , as Archbishop of Cologne , gave the order to build a new Hochstadenburg made of stone on the grounds of the outer bailey in the immediate vicinity of the Erft in connection with measures for the general fortification of the Archbishopric of Cologne. The remains of this castle were excavated about 100 m north of the old motte in the years 1933–1934. These consisted of the foundations and a surrounding wall , a gate system and a round corner tower. The foundations of a chapel were on the northern edge of the outer bailey . This chapel was a simple hall building with a rectangular choir, 11.40 m long and 5.35 m wide.
Abandonment of the castle
The stone Hochstaden Castle was abandoned in the course of the 14th century, the castle was last mentioned in a document in 1328. After that the "Husterknupp" became desolate, finds from the 15th century are missing. From 1956, the site and the surrounding area fell victim to open-cast lignite mining and were excavated, and the surrounding areas were relocated.
Aftermath
After the castle was abandoned, a small, non-commercial vineyard that was built in the late 1990s on the south-western slope of the nearby recultivated Königshovener Höhe , which produces around 150 bottles, was named Garzweiler Husterknupp .
See also
literature
- Rhenish yearbook. Reports from the landscape cultivation. Vol. 1, 1956, ISSN 0482-8720 .
- Horst Wolfgang Böhme (Hrsg.): Castles of the Salierzeit. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1991, ISBN 3-7995-4134-9 .
- Adolf Herrnbrodt among others: The Husterknupp. A castle complex on the Lower Rhine from the early Middle Ages (= Bonner Jahrbücher . Supplements 6, ISSN 0067-4893 ). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1958.
Individual evidence
- ↑ here , (RWE neighborhood newspaper) 3/2014, p. 20 f