Zwarte Arend Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Zwarte Arend Castle (“Black Eagle”) stands in Deurne, district of Antwerp, at the entrance to the Professor van den Wildenberglaan. Mentioned in 1625 and 1639 on the occasion of sales, it belonged in 1756 to Simon Karel de Neuf, whose son Simon Jozef gave it its present appearance in 1784, a blend of Classicism and Neoclassicism. It is surrounded by a moat and set in a rectangular park of which only a quarter survives, with a quadrilobe-shaped pond, beech hedges, an 18th-century garden statue, a garden pavilion and an ice house. The Sitters and Covens farms, long 18th-century farmsteads, were dependencies of the castle. The d'Outremont, Cogels and Meeûs families subsequently owned it; Albert Maquinay bought it in 1903, and Professor L. Van den Wildenberg was the last private owner (1937). The Antwerp CPAS acquired the castle and 3.3 hectares of park in 1957 and installed a residential care home there in 1960. Together with the neighbouring castle of Ertbrugge, Zwarte Arend forms part of a landscape ensemble of about 94 hectares, protected since 1985.