En un regard
Le château en bref
Hagenkasteel is the centrepiece of the Hagen estate, Poverstraat 5, in the hamlet of Ossel (Brussegem, municipality of Merchtem, Flemish Brabant). It takes its name from the Hagen(s) family, who have been associated with the site since the seventeenth century: in 1624, Godefroy Hagen(s), receiver of the royal artillery, became the owner of the "Hoff te Ossele", also known as "te Logien". A figurative map drawn in 1699 by the surveyor Jan van Acoleyen shows the property then surrounded by a moat and bearing three buildings, including a pleasure house (speelhuis).
It was this building that Jean Hagen, Godefroy's grandson, remodelled in 1710 to give it the structure that still defines the present house: a double house of five symmetrical bays, in brick and sandstone, on two storeys beneath a steeply pitched roof, in keeping with the Brabantine pleasure-house model. Beneath the nineteenth-century render, stone-harped window surrounds and the stubs of former casement windows survive. Around 1865, Louis Anoul, brother of War Minister Victor Anoul, extended the residence by two bays to the west and probably the whole of its northern half, which ends in pointed gables; the moat had by then disappeared. Shortly before 1914, his son Louis-Antoine added cottage-style details, such as roof verges on timber brackets, and had the outbuildings and the gardener's house lengthened.
The landscape park created by Anoul retains copper beeches, a pedunculate oak, a giant sequoia and two weeping silver lindens near a pond remodelled into a horseshoe shape in 1976. Acquired in 1948 by the Brussels notary Jean-P. Jacobs, the estate was enlarged to around fifty hectares by his son, Baron Georges Jacobs, after 1975; the park, extended to about twelve hectares, received numerous new plantings, pavilions and a mixed kitchen garden. The estate has been listed as a recorded architectural heritage site since 2021 and remains a private property whose public access is not documented.
