Kasteel Menten de Horne

En un regard

Le château en bref

Menten de Horne Castle stands in Melveren, a section of Sint-Truiden (Saint-Trond), between the village centre and the Diestersteenweg, in the middle of a small landscaped park. The present neoclassical building is recorded in the land register in 1846 and dates from 1845–1846: it succeeded an older residence, already noted only as a ‘plaats’, that is, a property without a habitable building, in the registers of 1844, and which no longer appears on Vander Maelen's map (1845–1850). The castle forms a rectangular block of seven bays and two storeys above a basement, built of brick on a base faced with stone, under a hipped slate roof. On the south-west side, the three central bays form a quarter-circle projecting bay topped by an attic and a dome; the rear façade, flanked by two projecting bays, opens onto a balustraded terrace served by a wide staircase. The windows are framed in bluestone, those of the basement being arched and barred. The name recalls the Menten family, which produced several burgomasters in Sint-Truiden and the neighbouring villages; Jan Willem de Menten de Horne (1815–1888) sat on the Limburg Provincial Council and its permanent deputation. The outbuildings were enlarged in 1857, 1858 and 1887, and the irregular moats that bordered the park had been filled in by 1944. Two polygonal bluestone piers from the mid-nineteenth century mark the entrance to the estate, facing the former Schabroek Castle. The castle has been listed as built heritage since 2018, its park being recorded separately.