Qualla: Sint-Maartensdijk Castle

Sint-Maartensdijk Castle: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sometime before 1341, Knight Pieter Gherontszoon and his sons were ambushed near Scherpenisse on the road to court. Their attackers - members of the Van Borselen clan and their allies - tied them up, clubbed them to death where they lay, then loaded the bodies into a boat, crossed the Pluimpot, and spent the night camped at the foot of Sint-Maartensdijk Castle. The castle belonged to Pieter's father. It was a message. Whatever Sint-Maartensdijk would become over the next five centuries - the seat of medieval power brokers, the dowry of Anna van Egmont, an Orange family possession, eventually nothing at all - it began with bodies left at the gate.

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Sint-Maartensdijk Castle: Water Castle of the Polder

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sint-Maartensdijk sits in the Oudelandpolder, the oldest reclaimed land west of the Pluimpot - a tidal trench that once cut the island of Tholen in two. The village began as Haestinge, named perhaps for the hare on its old coat of arms or perhaps for an older name of the Pluimpot...

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Image: MartinD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sint-Maartensdijk Castle: The Borselen Inheritance

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. After the 1342 reckoning for the Scherpenisse murders - banishments handed down by the Count of Holland, some lenient, some not - the lordship of Sint-Maartensdijk shifted in 1354 to a different branch of Van Borselen. Floris I bought the title from Count William V for 1,600 geme...

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Sint-Maartensdijk Castle: Becoming an Orange Possession

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Frank van Borssele died in 1470 without legitimate heirs, Sint-Maartensdijk passed through his sister Alienora down a chain of marriages - Van Buren, Van Culemborg, eventually to Floris van Egmont, Count of Buren, councilor of Charles the Bold and Maximilian I. His granddaug...

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Sint-Maartensdijk Castle: Vanishing

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1695 the main castle was visibly decaying. Successive Orange princes had almost never set foot in it. From 1710 they began pulling it down in pieces, selling the brick and timber, while the outer bailey kept its working farm going for another eighty-five years. The Batavian Re...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 4.0