Qualla: Dussen Castle

Dussen Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Jensbn~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. On the night of 18 November 1421 a storm tide forced its way up the Maas estuary, broke the dikes of the Grote Hollandse Waard, and drowned a stretch of farmland the size of a small country. The St. Elizabeth's flood is still one of the largest natural disasters in Dutch history; estimates of the dead run into the thousands, and dozens of villages disappeared. Dussen Castle, a 14th-century water castle south of what is now the Biesbosch, did not disappear, but it did not survive intact either. The floodwaters tore everything above the foundations away, except for the two heavy towers at the entrance. When the castle was rebuilt half a century later, those two surviving towers were left exactly where they had been - in the middle of one wing, not at the corners. The result is one of the oddest-looking castles in the Netherlands.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Jensbn~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Dussen Castle: Before the Flood

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michiel1972, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first version of Dussen was a single square tower, built in or before 1330. In 1387 the lord Arent van der Dussen received a remarkable charter from Albert I, Duke of Bavaria, authorising him to "make and build our house on our manor at Dussen as big and strong as he likes." ...

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Image: Michiel1972 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dussen Castle: The Night the Dikes Broke

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Arent III had only been lord of Dussen for four years when the water came. The Grote Hollandse Waard, a vast reclaimed polder between Dordrecht and the Maas, had grown careless about its dikes; one breach was enough. The flood waters spilled across the Land van Altena and reached...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Dussen Castle: A Tuscan Gallery in the Brabant Polder

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1607 Walraven van Gendt, a baron with a long career in the Dutch and Brandenburg armies, bought the castle. He had fought at the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600. He rebuilt Dussen almost from the ground up - heightening the 1470 wings by a storey, and adding an elegant Tuscan col...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dussen Castle: Carmelites, Auctions, and a Wartime Restoration

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerard Dukker, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1901 the Carmelite sisters arrived. They had been expelled from France by the new French anti-clerical laws and they made Dussen their convent until 1920, adding a chapel along the way. After they left, the castle drifted. It was offered at auction in April 1924 for 10,400 gui...

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Image: Gerard Dukker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dussen Castle: Town Hall, Wedding Venue, Survivor

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ivory, Public domain. Dussen Castle reopened as the town hall of Dussen in June 1954, and stayed in that role until the municipality was absorbed into Werkendam in 1997. Today the castle belongs to Landgoed Brabant B.V., a subsidiary of Monumentenbeheer Brabant, and is used for weddings and cultural e...

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Image: Ivory | Public domain