Kasteel Spoelberch

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Spoelberch estate, in Wespelaar (Haecht), extends the Overbeke seigneury, the most important of the village's four seigneuries, first mentioned in 1238. Its original form, a circular moated mound with a double moat, remains legible despite later alterations. Sold in 1796 to the Artois family, the estate received a landscape garden from 1797. The ‘Elysium’ was laid out in 1816–1817, Albert Marnef remodelled the château around 1850, and Edmond Willems became the owner in 1868, before the estate passed by marriage to the de Spoelberch family. In 1882, Henri Beyaert built an eclectic château there, which was looted during the First World War, then demolished in 1954 and replaced by a manor house. What survives is the landscape park designed by Ghislain-Joseph Henry around the mound and its moats, with a sandstone pyramid housing an ice house, the Temple of Flora, an artificial grotto, the orangery, whose south façade is preserved, greenhouses, and an enclosed kitchen garden redesigned by Jacques Wirtz in 1983. The descendants of Elisabeth Willems have kept the residence as a private home; the park is distinct from the neighbouring Arboretum Wespelaar, which is open to the public.