Wit Kasteel

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Wit Kasteel (‘White Castle’) stands at No. 1 Hauwsestraat, in Scheldewindeke, a section of the municipality of Oosterzele in East Flanders. Its name, attested on an old postcard, derives from its rendered and painted white façades. It is a former country house with a pleasure garden, which the cadastral records date to around 1863 and attribute to a Ghent client, F. Meiresonne. The main building takes the form of a double-pile house five bays wide, on two and a half storeys, under a hipped roof covered in Flemish tiles. The principal façade, treated as a cornice façade, shows the influence of the Second Empire style: rusticated corner quoins, false ashlar on the ground floor, sill panels framed by bluestone string courses, tall arched openings on the ground floor, a French window with shutters and a keystone with a diamond-point motif, and first-floor windows with segmental arches and stucco keystones. A broad panelled entablature houses small mezzanine windows between elongated modillions. The rear façade follows the same treatment, while the rendered right gable is pierced by two oculi; single-storey annexes, partly altered, extend perpendicularly from the rear. The interior retains a neoclassical salon with a neo-Rococo fireplace in red marble, ceilings with floral stucco mouldings, and walls and doors painted with flowers. The building appears in the Flemish inventory of architectural heritage and holds the status of protected architectural heritage (vastgesteld bouwkundig erfgoed), renewed in 2023 after an initial listing in 2009. It is a privately owned property, and the inventory does not specify its current use or whether it is open to the public.