Château de Ferage

En un regard

Le château en bref

At the heart of the hamlet of Ferage, in Mesnil-Église within the municipality of Houyet, the castle-farm is the last witness of a lordship whose history goes back to the 12th century. Recorded as Ferarga in 1135 among the possessions of Stavelot Abbey, the land was later placed under the protection of lay advocates, while the monks kept a landed estate there until 1670. Over the centuries the lordship passed to the Brisbois and the Stolpert families, was then united with that of Finnevaux, and finally came to the Renson, a patrician family from Dinant. In 1837 King Leopold I acquired the lands of Ardenne and Férage to form a vast estate, which Leopold II incorporated into the Royal Trust (Donation royale) in 1903. Through it, the castle-farm still belongs to the Belgian State. Its large park shelters a pedunculate oak listed as a remarkable tree, and around 1940 the farm still worked 118 hectares, a sign of the estate's agricultural importance in this corner of the Condroz.