Zandenburg

Zandenburg was a famous castle just south of Veere. Nothing remains of it, except some foundations below ground level.

Zandenburg was first mentioned as the house and fortress (veste) in the Lordship (ambacht) of Zanddijk. Zanddijk (Sandick) literally means dike on the sand, i.e. on an area with sandy ground. Likewise, Zandenburg is the burg (castle) near or on the sand. The second part of the name: Burg marks its origin as one of the many defendable structures built on an artificial hill.

The remains of Zandenburg are located just south of the walls of Veere. In 1812 Veere's fortifications reached the castle terrains. The outer bailey of the castle reached almost up to the Veerse Watergang, which connects Veere to Middelburg. In 1944 the Inundation of Walcheren took place. After the land had been made dry much later, the outer moat on the west side of the castle terrain was found to have become part of a new waterway which ran from Zanddijk to the Veerse Watergang.

In the late seventeenth century Kornelis Klein, mayor of Veere investigated the ruins of Zandenburg. He ordered some digging for the foundations and had the mathematician Isaac Hildernisse take measurements. Like Hildernisse did at other places, he made a floor plan, but this was lost. Based on his work, several artists later made reconstructions of how they thought Zandenburg looked previously.

The most striking element of one of the eighteenth century reconstructions is an artificial hill that looks like an impossible sphere planted on the castle grounds. It is based on Hildernisse's drawing of the foundations, which shows a circular structure in the center of the terrain. A very solid explanation of the impossible sphere was given by Verwey. He noted that the path around the hill, and the cupola on top resembled a very close by castle motte which had such a path and cupola only decades before, and might have inspired the drawers.

There can be little doubt that there was a circular, and therefore artificial structure at Zandenburg. It dated from the thirteenth century or earlier and according to later drawings, it had a diameter of about 35 m. It could have been one of the c. 150 artificial hills in Zeeland. In such case, it is probable that Zandenburg was a motte-and-bailey castle. Jaap Renaud thought a round water castle much more likely than a small hill.

Text adapted from “Zandenburg” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Zandenburg ranks #6,292 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #96 of the 201 mapped in Netherlands. 4 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Middelburg, 6 km away. See how Netherlands compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗