Buitenhof Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Buitenhof Castle, also known as De Wilde Castle, stands at number 31 Meersstraat in Heusden, a district of the municipality of Destelbergen, east of Ghent. It was originally a country house attested at least since the first half of the 18th century, isolated in the centre of a wide moat of an almost square plan. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the estate was linked to the Paret family: a physician of that name was in charge of it in 1778, and a Paret *rentier* (man of independent means) owned it in the first half of the 19th century. In the early 1900s, the cement manufacturer A. Dutry-Massy remodelled and enlarged the house, notably adding a corner tower to the north-east; an old postcard shows it then as a small brick and stone château. The property later passed by marriage to the notary De Wilde, whose name it still bears. Around 1932, the moat is said to have been filled in and a wing added to the north-west, while the park was probably extended and served by a new avenue from the corner of the Steenakkerstraat. Today the château presents itself as a rendered and whitewashed two-storey building under slate roofs with intersecting hip roofs, partly covered by vegetation. It forms part of the landscape ensemble of the Heusden-Gentbrugge castles, on the banks of the Scheldt, and is listed in the Flemish inventory of architectural heritage.