Cantecroy Castle

This castle was originally one of the oldest castles in the province of Antwerp and may have been of Frankish heritage.The oldest parts of today's castle date from the 13th and 14th centuries. There is a 15th century chapel whose facade was altered in the 17th century. There is a gatehouse from the 15th and 16th centuries, the remains of a curtain wall from 1576 and a substructure with a round corner tower of an older curtain wall from around 1450. There is also an old Gothic courtyard and a pillory.The current façade dates from around the end of the 17th century when the château was owned by the Counts of Fiennes. They also built the current gardens.(translated from Dutch Wikipedia)

Seigneury first mentioned in 1289, successively owned by the families Volcaert (13th century), Berthout (13th century - 14th century), Van Ranst (14th century - 16th century), Perrenot, including Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (16th century) and the Fiennes (17th century - 18th century); the castle had several owners in the 19th and 20th centuries, currently owned by R. Van Daele.The medieval castle (13th - 14th century), renovated and enlarged in the middle of the 15th century, was transformed by Granvelle into a sumptuous country residence. Granvelle enlarged it with the so-called "cardinaels villages" (Mortsel, Edegem, Luithagen, Boechout, Borsbeek, Hove, Vremde, Kontich, Waarloos, Reet and Aartselaar) which in 1570 were bundled into a county of Cantecroy, which was founded a short time later (first quarter of the 17th century) was broken up again. By order of the Duke of Alom, the castle was reinforced again around 1570: a heavy ring wall was built around the earthen rampart (see moat from the first half of the 16th century) with bastions on the corners and on the north side a raised terrace for artillery pieces . Cantecroy was strategically very important as the last reinforcement for Antwerp and as a control point for the lanes from Antwerp to Lier and Mechelen. In 1618, the city of Antwerp bought the keep and several other buildings to deprive the castle of its fortified character, the castle was dismantled (walls, bastions and tower) and thus provided building materials for restorations in the area. Three buildings remained standing, namely the gatehouse, the chapel with chapel and the farm with stables. The entrance building was enlarged in the second half of the 17th century and converted into a mansion. When Fort IV was dug in 1860, the castle fell within the perimeter of the military servitudes, so that it lost grounds and was actually doomed to disappear.Today only the manor house, the chapel and the farm remain of the old castle; the other buildings were erected in the second half of the 20th century, partly with recycled material from Antwerp (see damage caused by flying bombs during the Second World War) and the surrounding area.Source: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/13587

Living in a castle, including a moat