Qualla: Haamstede Castle

Haamstede Castle: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yhoitink, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. The trowels hit something they did not expect. In 1964, archaeologists digging east of the keep at Haamstede uncovered tuff stone, then a small tuff wall, then bodies - skeletons laid east to west, hands at their sides, buried before the year 1100. By the time the dig was finished, twenty-nine of them had emerged from the sandy soil of Schouwen. None of them were Vikings. Centuries before any lord raised a brick tower on this spot, someone was burying their dead here, beneath the dune grass and the wheeling gulls.

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Image: Yhoitink | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Haamstede Castle: A Tower Made for Surviving

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. What rose above those forgotten graves in the second half of the thirteenth century was an unusual building for the Low Countries: a Turmburg, a tower castle. Most Dutch lords surrounded their keeps with curtain walls and outer defences; the keep was a last resort. Haamstede's bu...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 4.0

Haamstede Castle: Burned by Celebration

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G.Th. Delemarre, CC BY-SA 4.0. In February 1525, news arrived from northern Italy: the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had crushed the French at the Battle of Pavia. Schouwen-Duiveland celebrated. Tar barrels were set blazing on the walls of the castle - by then expanded into a far larger second castle, four time...

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Image: G.Th. Delemarre | CC BY-SA 4.0

Haamstede Castle: Witte and the Long Hand of the Counts

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter van der Wielen, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. The names that ran through the deeds of Haamstede sound like a list of medieval intrigues, because that is what they are. In 1299 John I, Count of Holland, gave the castle to his dear brother Witte - bastard of Count Floris V, born around 1280, later celebrated in nineteenth-cent...

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Image: Peter van der Wielen | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Haamstede Castle: Owls and Nature Reserve

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit H. Janse, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1981 the castle passed to Natuurmonumenten, the Dutch nature conservation society. The family that had lived there retained the right to keep doing so. Around the keep, oak and beech woods spread across former parkland, and the moat reflects whatever Schouwen's wide skies happ...

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Image: H. Janse | CC BY-SA 4.0