Kasteel Bouwelhof

En un regard

Le château en bref

Bouwelhof Castle, in Bouwel (Grobbendonk, province of Antwerp), is a classicising mansion dating from around 1820. It has a rectangular plan of seven bays under a hipped roof, with a central projecting bay surmounted by an arched pediment. It replaced an older castle that disappeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Bouwel became an independent lordship in 1487, and Huybrecht Brant had a castle built there. The Bosschaert de Bouwel family acquired the estate in 1789. The present building is attributed to della Faille de Leverghem, nephew of the patron Paulus Josephus Bosschaert de Bouwel. The English-style landscape park, probably dating from 1818, lost part of its extent in 1859 when the Antwerp–Herentals railway line was built through it. The outbuildings (a lodge house of 1851, a carriage house, and stables extended in 1873) complete the ensemble, which is surrounded by a moat. The buildings have been protected as a monument since 7 March 1994, and the estate as a cultural-historical landscape since 1980.