Weims Castle

Weims Castle - residential tower

Weims Castle is a moated castle in the Belgian town of Kettenis . It was first mentioned in 1334. It owes its name to Johann von Weims, whose wife Jüttgen von Liebernmyn brought the property into the marriage in 1408.

history

The residential tower of the complex around 1912

The moated castle Weims was created in the 14th century by division from the Libermé manor and, like Libermé, became a fief of the Aachen Marienstift . Initially, up to the aforementioned Jüttgen von Libernmyn, a branch of the von Libermé family owned the castle before it passed into the Weims family. When Johanna von Weims married the Junker Derich van Hirtz, known as Landscron, the castle came into the possession of the van Hirtz family in 1524, and they kept it until the middle of the 17th century. Today's manor buildings, originally completely surrounded by water, were built in the 16th century at the behest of this family and the construction of today's residential tower is attributed to a Wilhelm von Hirtz around 1551. Around 1581 the Weimser Gut comprised 58 acres and 25 rods and could be reached via a drawbridge and an avenue from the Ketteniser Hochstraße.

In the Thirty Years' War Castle Weims took great damage. During the subsequent reconstruction, most of the moats were filled in. After the owners changed several times from 1678, the Montzen doctor Jean Lambert Rasquin was enfeoffed with the property in 1755, which gave the manor house its current appearance. In the course of these renovations, the western wing of the farm building was renewed and the drawbridge was dismantled. After the doctor's death in 1780, the property went to the lawyer Jean Guillaume Joseph Poswick, who was the last liege lord of the Aachen Marienstift. His son Pierre André Guillaume Joseph Poswick (1769-1851), among other things, Mayor of Kettenis and owner of Libermé Castle from 1794 to 1828, sold Weims to Eupen Mayor Andreas Joseph Franz von Grand Ry . His grandson Andreas Karl Hubert de Grand Ry inherited the property and had the eastern wing of the farm building renewed in 1892 before his son Andreas Joseph Julius de Grand Ry received the entire property. In 1917 he sold Weims Castle to the brothers Nicolas and Leo Miessen, whose descendants still own the castle, its farm wing and a total of 36 hectares of land.

Nowadays the property consists of the manor house, a farm and a bed and breakfast hotel. The residential tower has been a listed building since 1988 .

description

The mansion impresses with its massive, almost square, two-storey tower construction made of sandstone with corner cuboids and stepped plinth and a tiled roof resting on blocks with long hips. The actual main facade is on the northeast side in the direction of the Hochstraße and is characterized by a round arched entrance door with two protruding pillars, which formerly served as a stop for the bridge. Several rectangular, straight lintel window openings are from the 18th century, with some of the original openings, over which the relief arches can still be seen, from the 16th century. Something similar can be found on the north-west and south-east facade, plus individual loopholes . The southwest facade is characterized by several loopholes in height of the pedestal and in the floor as well as a narrow walled cross-rung opening and traces of earlier by heavy blue stone corbels abortions held.

The two economic wings, which used to be surrounded by a moat, are the expression of different epochs. From the first construction phase towards the end of the 16th century, the round-arched car entrance with protruding fighters inscribed in the rectangular stop on the west wing , which were formerly intended to accommodate the drawbridge, still comes from the west wing . This is followed by the newer extension, which is dated to the year 1761 by Ankereisen. The ground floor is made of quarry stone, while the upper floor was once made of half-timbered houses . The east wing on the opposite side, with its far overhanging palatine tile saddle roof supported by consoles, is used exclusively as stables and was fundamentally changed, renewed and expanded before 1899.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Weims Castle . Retrieved March 19, 2014.

50.650374 6.042198Coordinates: 50 ° 39 ′ 1.3 ″ N , 6 ° 2 ′ 31.9 ″ E

[1] Weims Castle . Retrieved March 19, 2014.