Gripswald Castle

Haus Gripswald is a manor house near the district of Ossum, which today belongs to Meerbusch. The house is located south of Ossum, on the edge of the Herrenbusch forest, halfway to Schloss Pesch.

Originally, the estate was probably a moated castle, its moat fed by the passing Buersbach stream.

As early as the 12th century, an estate called Ossum was first mentioned in a document. This was probably the house later named Gripswald. In 1422, Archbishop Dietrich of Cologne freed this very estate of Ossum from the service obligation of its Vogt Wilhelm von Büderich zu Ossum. In return, the estate was elevated to a Kurköln fiefdom.

The house remained under the rule of the Von Büderich family for a long time and in electoral possession until secularization.

At the end of the 19th century, the house came into the possession of the noble family von Arenberg, who also owned the neighboring Schloss Pesch.

The house also became known, among other things, through the nearby discovery of a Roman cult site in 1863; the sacrificial stones discovered there were named after the excavation site as Gripswalder Matronensteine.