Nieuwenhuizen Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Nieuwenhuizen Castle stands in Hofstade, a district of Zemst (Flemish Brabant), on the Ambroossteenweg, east of the village. It still bears the name of its first known owner, Willem Van den Nieuwenhuysen, probably the son of the Mechelen hatter Constant Van den Nieuwenhuysen, who had acquired the neighbouring Ambrooskasteel, a former Jesuit property, in the 1770s. Around 1830, Willem owned the house, a pleasure garden with a pond of unusual shape, an adjoining farm and more than thirty hectares of land. The building, whose core may date back to the 17th-18th centuries, has undergone so many alterations that its archaeological study is difficult; the most recent major transformation dates from 1930, carried out for the Mechelen copper founder Frans Schroëter. The landscape park of about 1.2 hectares, laid out in the early 19th century in the spirit of the first English gardens, includes a 7-metre belvedere mound, a serpentine pond, old oaks and sweet chestnuts, as well as remnants of a hornbeam hedge. The whole is protected as a cultural and historical landscape since 13 January 1976.