Ten Dorpe Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Ten Dorpe Castle, in Mortsel (Theofiel Reynlaan 3), is a small moated castle of brick and sandstone, with a sixteenth-century core, extensively remodelled in the nineteenth century. It occupies what remains of an estate, the Cantecroy fief, first mentioned in 1290, which housing estates, streets and the railway line have almost entirely absorbed. Set on fire in 1583 during the siege of Antwerp, it was rebuilt in the mid-seventeenth century as a country residence by the Goubau family, then transformed around the middle of the nineteenth century in the Flemish Neo-Renaissance style: a projecting plinth, a south-east extension with a chapel, a stepped gable and remodelled window openings. It has two storeys under slate roofs, an octagonal tower of four storeys topped by a pepper-pot spire, a three-arched brick bridge with segmental arches, and a crenellated porch bearing the arms of the du Toict d'Oyevaersnest family, surmounted by a Virgin and Child. The landscaped park laid out at the beginning of the twentieth century has almost entirely disappeared; a stretch of moat and a small park remain. Protected as a monument and site since 1984, the castle was restored in 1977 and converted into a residence.