Thor Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thor Castle in 1908

The castle Thor ( French Château Thor ), also called Haus Thor , is a castle complex in Astenet , a village in the municipality of Lontzen in the German-speaking part of Belgium . Their roots lie in the brewery of Astenet Castle, where today's manor house stands. The property got its name from its striking gate , which was built in 1733 based on a design by Johann Joseph Couvens .

The castle is since 1947 - out as a small hotel and is since 16 September 1987, - with a few years of interruption monument .

description

architecture

Gatehouse of the facility

The castle is a three-wing complex, the buildings of which are grouped around a cobblestone inner courtyard. Access is provided by a single-storey gate made of sandstone and bluestone quarry with corner blocks on the northeast side of the property. It shows coupled rectangular windows with grilles on the outside and is closed off by a hipped roof with slate covering. In the middle of the ridge is a weather vane with the letters D and L (Doctor Lambertz). The wedge stone of the arched gate shows the year 1733 and the coat of arms of the Heyendal family. The entrance is closed off by a baroque volute gable, in whose shell-shaped niche there is a statue of the Madonna and child. The gable is crowned by a flame pot. There are two spherical curbstones on both sides of the arched entrance. The courtyard wedge of the gate entrance shows the year 1732 and the inscription sit nomine / Domini / Bene / dictum ( German  Let the name of the Lord be praised ).

The manor house occupies the northern part of the western wing of the castle. It is a whitewashed building with two floors of quarry stone masonry , which are closed by a tile-covered gable roof . The building can be dated to the year 1700 thanks to wall anchors . The arched windows on the courtyard side have a bluestone frame with a wedge stone at the end. A small, three-step staircase leads to the central entrance door, above the lintel of which there is an ox-eye in a large bluestone slab. On the ground floor of the building there are some corbels that probably come from the previous building of the current house.

To the west, the manor house is connected to the garden side by the so-called garden wing , a two-story extension with a mansard roof from 1738, which can be dated by a keystone above a door. In the corner of this extension and the manor house there is a three-storey square tower with a crenellated crown and arched twin windows. The two lower floors of the tower also date from 1738, but the top floor including battlements is a historicist addition from the 19th century. To the south of the mansion is the narrow former coach house with two floors made of blue rubble.

The so-called farmhouse and part of the L-shaped farm buildings form the south wing of the complex . The farmhouse in the western part of the wing is a residential building from the 17th century, the ground floor of which is made of quarry stone and the upper floor of half-timbered houses . The remaining part of the south wing is taken up by stables with haylofts from the second half of the 18th century. Both parts of the building wing have a tile-covered gable roof.

The two-story east wing opposite the mansion is an elongated building from the beginning of the 18th century. Its outer facade shows quarry stone masonry in the lower area, while the upper floor consists of half-timbered, whose compartments are lined with bricks . This part of the castle used to house barns and haylofts. A large square hay hatch on the upper floor is evidence of the latter. The facade of this wing on the courtyard side is made of sandstone and broken stone. The keystone of a walled, arched car entrance shows the year 1706.

Interior

Wall painting in the drawing room

Inside are some old stucco ceilings and fireplaces obtained, for example, in 1952 deconsecrated chapel and the adjacent lounge . The chapel is paneled and has carved oak doors in the Louis quatorze style . The walls in the salon are covered with painted wallpaper depicting biblical scenes from the life of King Solomon . They date from the 18th century, but were supplemented with humorous overpainting by Albert Baur in the 19th century .

Castle Park

The ensemble is surrounded by a one hectare large park . In it is a pavilion from the second quarter of the 18th century, which is no longer in its original condition due to changes. In the park to the south of the castle there is a pond, where the foundations of a castle from the 11th century were found. These are the remains of the former Astenet Castle.

history

In the Middle Ages, Astenet was a fiefdom owned by the von Astenet family in the 14th century. Their castle was a massive residential and defense tower with four corner towers, which was similar to the still-preserved Vlattenhaus in Eynatten , and stood in the immediate vicinity of today's castle in the area of ​​the castle pond. A moat surrounding it and a drawbridge provided for its protection . When Hermann von Astenet, the last male member of the family, died in 1416, the property passed to his brother-in-law Johann Scheiffart (h) von der Heyden. When he died, his three sons shared the inheritance among themselves. The son Johann received the part with the castle. The other two sons received the Panhaus (today Asteneter Hof) and the nearby Mützhof . When Johann von der Heyden passed away, his son Winand succeeded him as owner in 1467. Via his son Johann, the property came to Winand's granddaughter Clara, who married Johann (Jan) Molener, known as Hens von Astenet, and who brought the property to him on April 11, 1543. For this reason, the name "Hens Lehen" was used for the property until the 18th century.

The couple's heir was their son Wilhelm, but in 1598 he and his brother Winand exchanged the stock loan in Astenet for other farms in Astenet. At that time the old castle was already very dilapidated, towards the end of the 16th century the residential tower collapsed. Winand bequeathed the property to his wife, who bequeathed it to their daughter Barbara from her first marriage to Nikolas Peltzer. Through her marriage to Reinard Reul, the property came to his family. Reinard had the ruinous residential tower rebuilt in 1626, presumably because it had become uninhabitable in the meantime. In the following years the castle was also called Reulenhaus. Reinard's son Hubert increased the property considerably through land purchases and is still guaranteed as the owner for the year 1652. After his death, the property first went to his son Johann-Wilhelm and then to his sister Johanna-Maria. She had married Don Ambrosio de Quintana-Riva, an army commissioner in Spanish service who sold twelve acres of land including the castle and its brewery in 1698 to Johann Heyendal, who lived at the Mützhof.

The new owner was the tax collector of the Duchy of Limburg and in 1700 built the current manor house of the castle in place of the old brewery, which was called "Castel" after completion. He left the new building to his sons Johann-Stephan and Heinrich when he died in 1717. They expanded the facility in 1733 by building a gate based on a design by Johann Joseph Couvens. This gave its name to the complex, which was subsequently called Thor Castle. The two brothers also added an extension and a tower to the mansion at the rear in 1738. The castle came to this family through Heinrich's daughter Anna Katharina, who married Walter Johann Franz Birven from Montzen in 1762 . During her time as the owner - according to tradition - the old residential tower collapsed in 1775. Its stones were used to build the neighboring Hoen'schen Hof. A coat of arms stone with the initials RR (Reinard Reul) that has been preserved there still testifies to this today.

Josephine Birven brought Thor Castle to her husband Friedrich Lambertz from Aachen in 1840. He had the tower of the manor house changed in the historicist style. When he died in 1899, his nephew Emil Lambertz inherited, whose son Friedrich opened a small hotel-restaurant in the castle in 1947. For this purpose, a covered terrace was added to the garden side of the manor house in 1954 . The castle remained the property of the Lambertz family until 1997. Since that year it has belonged to an Aachen company that began extensive restorations . First, work was done on the interiors of the manor and farmhouse . A new roof for the southeast wing followed later. Today, after a break, the castle is again run as a hotel and can be rented for celebrations and events.

literature

  • House Thor. In: Heribert Reiners (arrangement and ed.) With the collaboration of Heinrich Neu : Die Kunstdenkmäler von Eupen-Malmedy. L. Schwann Verlag, Düsseldorf 1935 (reprint of Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, Düsseldorf 1982, ISBN 3-590-32117-2 ), p. 185 f.
  • Martine Joway- Marchal: Thor Castle. In: Ghislaine de Bievre (ed.): Province de Liège: Arrondissement de Verviers, Part 2: H – L (= Le patrimoine monumental de la Belgique. Volume 12.2). Mardaga, Lüttich 1984, ISBN 2-8021-0062-9 , pp. 734-736 (excerpts from Google Books ).
  • Manfred Nimax: Castles, palaces, mansions in East Belgium. 3. Edition. Self-published, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-020297-1 , pp. 62–65.
  • Guy Poswick: Les Délices du Limbourg. Self-published, Verviers 1951, pp. 283-288 ( digitized version ).
  • Administration of the German-speaking Community (Hrsg.): Lontzen (= monument directory. Volume 7). Administration of the German-speaking Community, Eupen 1989, pp. 264–270.

Web links

Commons : Thor Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b M. Nimax: Castles, palaces, mansions in East Belgium. 2010, p. 62.
  2. ↑ Schloss Thor on the cultural heritage website of the German-speaking Community , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  3. ^ A b c Administration of the German-speaking Community: Lontzen. 1989, p. 265.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Thor Castle on trois-frontieres.be , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d Administration of the German-speaking Community: Lontzen. 1989, p. 269.
  6. ↑ a b c d Administration of the German-speaking Community: Lontzen. 1989, p. 270.
  7. ^ G. Poswick: Les Delices du Limbourg. 1951, p. 284.
  8. ↑ Spring hike to Astenet. In: GrenzEcho . Edition of April 9, 2011 ( online ( memento of the original of February 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.grenzecho.net
  9. ↑ Information about the park on the Schlosshotel's website , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  10. ^ Administration of the German-speaking Community: Lontzen. 1989, p. 264.
  11. ^ Administration of the German-speaking Community: Lontzen. 1989, pp. 264-265.
  12. ↑ Information on Jan Molener on kuckda.de , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  13. ↑ Information on Winand Hensen from Astenet on kuckda.de , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  14. ^ G. Poswick: Les Delices du Limbourg. 1951, p. 283.
  15. ↑ astenet.be , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  16. ↑ Thomas Kreft: Château Thor. From a residential tower to a luxury hotel. In: GrenzEcho. Edition of August 14, 2008 ( online) .
  17. ^ G. Poswick: Les Delices du Limbourg. 1951, p. 287.
  18. ↑ Since 1997. Restorations on Thor. In: GrenzEcho. Edition of August 14, 2008 ( online ).
  19. ↑ Thomas Kreft: The hotel and restaurant are available to guests upon registration. Thor Castle is properly maintained. In: GrenzEcho. Edition of August 14, 2008 ( online ).

Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 26.1 ″  N , 6 ° 1 ′ 59.4 ″  E