Nieuwendoorn

Nuwendoorn Castle (also Nieuwendoorn) was a fortress of Count Floris V located near the Rekerdam with a branch of the Rekere, at the far west of West Friesland, near the present-day Krabbendam (municipality of Schagen). It consisted of a residential keep of 11 metres by 11, a main castle of 32 metres by 32 and an outer bailey.[1] Construction began around 1282. After the assassination of Count Floris V in 1296, the castle, still under construction, was destroyed by the West Frisians, after which it was rebuilt. On 5 August 1321, Jan I of Polanen was appointed lord of the castle. A maintenance bill for the castle is known from 1367. After that, the castle is no longer mentioned; it may have disappeared in a flood around 1370. The bricks from which the castle was built may have been reused for the small church (the former Ursula) of Warmenhuizen.

The name of the area (Nyewendoren) was corrupted over the centuries into "Nieuwe Deuren". Even though it was known that there was an old fortress here and a newspaper article of 1883 reported that bricks had been found there, the castle was not rediscovered until 1948. Bram Biersteker regularly found bricks while ploughing and showed two of them to the amateur archaeologists Cees Wagenaar, Johan Lutjeharms and Jaap Westra, who then organised a survey of about 36 metres.

After a reorganisation in 1960, the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, or Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, carried out new research. The Nuwendoorn Foundation was founded in 1961. The foundations and the canals were restored between 1961 and 1967. The foundation was dissolved in 1980. The site has belonged to the province of North Holland since 1983. It is managed by Landschap Noord-Holland.

Machine-translated from “Château Nuwendoorn” on the French Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nieuwendoorn ranks #7,260 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #181 of the 200 mapped in Netherlands. Founded 1288, it is older than 66% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 825 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. 3 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Amsterdam, 43 km away. See how Netherlands compares in the castle statistics.

View on the interactive castle map →

Read the full history on Wikipedia (in French) ↗