Beauvoorde Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Beauvoorde Castle is a moated brick castle in the village of Wulveringem, in the municipality of Furnes (Veurne), in West Flanders. Its first known owner was Jan de Valuwe, in 1408. Set on fire by bandits in 1584, at the start of the Eighty Years' War, it was rebuilt in 1617 in the Renaissance style for Jacob de Bryarde, whose family kept it until 1828, before the estate fell into decline. In 1875, Arthur Merghelynck, then aged twenty-two, bought the ruined castle and saved it from demolition. He restored and extended it with the Furnes architect Jozef Vinck, rebuilding by imitation certain parts that had disappeared, including a Neo-Gothic chapel, and furnished it in the taste of the seventeenth century with antique pieces and copies. He bequeathed the estate to the Belgian State in 1905, wishing that it be preserved as it was; his widow lived there until 1941. The castle later passed to the Flemish Community, which entrusted its management to Herita. Surrounded by a park, it has been protected as a monument since 1987.