Bellenhof Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Bellenhof (or Beelenhof) Castle, in Maria-ter-Heide (Brasschaat, Bredabaan 704-710), is a "hof van plaisantie" in the French classical style, built around 1770–1771 for Baron de Beelen. He had bought the heathland estates of the region in 1768, subdivided and resold them, keeping only a vast domain along the former Breda road; the development of the Bredabaan thus laid the foundations of Maria-ter-Heide. The neoclassical château, with a U-shaped plan, has two storeys beneath slate-covered gable roofs; its rendered and painted façades are punctuated by triangular pediments, and its east and west gables carry clocks. It once housed a chapel. Among its successive owners were August de Baillet, the Osy de Wichen family, Ferdinand de Baillet-Latour, Albert van Steenberghe (1911), and then the Collin family (1917). At the end of the nineteenth century, a large part of the estate was expropriated for a military base. Burned during the Second World War, the castle was rebuilt in 1941–1947 according to the former model, with transverse wings added. It stands in a park of about 23.7 ha, where a neoclassical lodge from the nineteenth century houses stables, and it has been listed as a built heritage site since 2019.