A first medieval castle of Ter Rijst (name indicating the presence of brushwood) was destroyed in 1169 on the orders of the Count of Hainaut.
It was rebuilt around 1225 by Eggeric de Rist. His lordship belonged to the county of Hainaut, which had fought a fierce battle with Brabant. The foundations of this castle can still be found on the other side of the pond.
The Van der Noot family owned this castle for quite some time. Wouter van der Noot, knight, chamberlain to the Duke of Brabant, Philip the Good, acquired the Terrest domain in 1464.
Karel van der Noot had a new castle with ponds built on the current site in 1480 . It was a fortress with four large corner towers.
Viscount Théodore de Neulant de Pottelsberghe had the towers demolished and renovated the castle in a neoclassical style (1868-69). He was also the one who had the landscape park built.
In 1893 the castle came into the hands of Baron Ferdinand Jolly through marriage. From 1918 his successor Hubert Jolly took over the rental business.
Mr. Jules Delannoy, together with his family, rented the castle with all its involvement such as furniture, garden, pavilions and hunting and fishing rights from 1922. During their stay, Mr. Delannoy had major renovation works carried out such as replacing the roofs and constructing the central heating in two of the four wings of the castle. Sir Jules Delannoy died on the spot in November 1939 and the family left the castle at the beginning of May 1940 with the Second World War.
Elisabeth van der Noot d'Assche took up residence there.[4] During World War II, she was the mistress of military governor Alexander von Falkenhausen. After it had fallen into disgrace, the Germans carried out a house search on the domain (end of July 1944).
After the Second World War, the castle was rented by the Lord Van Lier. In 1966 the lease was taken over by the construction promoter Jean Baptiste L'Ecluse. The Brussels resident, meanwhile also chairman of RWDM, acquired the domain at the end of 1972 through his nv Delec. He held wild parties and wild boar hunting there.
In 1981, the domain was donated to the Belgian State by the NV Delec. Later, through regionalization, it became the property of the Flemish Community. It is managed by the Agency for Nature and Forests.