Qualla: Marquette Castle

Marquette Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Defence Line Amsterdam from Different city's, Netherlands, CC BY 2.0. In October 1358, a young nobleman named Wouter van Heemskerk tried to murder the bailiff of Kennemerland and missed. The bailiff, Reinoud van Brederode, escaped. Within weeks the regent of Holland - Count Albert - had brought troops north and was besieging Wouter's home: a round water castle ringed by wide moats, set in the marshy ground of Heemskerk. By March 1359 the walls broke. Wouter and his wife were allowed to walk out with what they could carry. The castle was confiscated, and Wouter eventually had to pay 7,000 shield-shields - a fortune - in reconciliation. He died in 1380 without legitimate heirs, and the medieval round water castle slowly faded out of use, its walls dismantled, its moats turned into the borders of an ornamental garden. What stands at the site today is something different - and yet, beneath the floor of an 18th-century manor's cellar, the thirteenth-century brick is still there.

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Image: Defence Line Amsterdam from Different city's, Netherlands | CC BY 2.0

Marquette Castle: A Ring of Water

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first castle was built sometime in the 13th century at the orders of Count William II of Holland, who ruled from 1247 to 1256 and was determined to subdue the rebellious West Frisians. He scattered new strongholds across the region, and Heemskerk - then called huys te Eemsker...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 4.0

Marquette Castle: A Castle Changes Names

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Guus van der Valk, CC BY-SA 3.0. Through the 14th and 15th centuries the castle passed by inheritance and marriage through the Van Heemskerk family, who were entangled in the Hook and Cod wars - the long, vicious civil conflict that defined late-medieval Holland. Gerard III van Heemskerk led the Cod faction in h...

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Image: Guus van der Valk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Marquette Castle: The Rendorp Vision

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johann Friedrich August Tischbein, Public domain. In 1717 an Amsterdam brewer and former mayor, Joachim Rendorp, bought the estate. His son Pieter Rendorp was an amateur architect with ambition. Between 1738 and 1741 he designed the stately eastern wing that still defines the building: a long block with a double roof, a projecti...

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Image: Johann Friedrich August Tischbein | Public domain

Marquette Castle: Centuries of Owners

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gravure A. Rademaker, Public domain. Wars and economic collapse trimmed the castle back. The French Period at the turn of the 19th century impoverished the Dutch aristocracy and led to the demolition of large parts of Marquette, including the entire northern section. Jacob van Rendorp van Marquette, born in 1795, fo...

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Image: gravure A. Rademaker | Public domain

Marquette Castle: Conferences and Crowdfunding

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andries Schoemaker / Gerrit Schoemaker / Cornelis Pronk / Abraham de Haen, Public domain. In 1977 the Gevers family sold the 61.5-hectare estate. Three years later the province of North Holland bought the surrounding land for 2.75 million guilders, leaving the castle itself in private hands. A six-million-guilder renovation in the early 1980s turned it into a conferen...

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Image: Andries Schoemaker / Gerrit Schoemaker / Cornelis Pronk / Abraham de Haen | Public domain