Havixbeck Castle

Haus Havixbeck is a three-winged castle complex, whose horseshoe shape opens to the south towards the outer bailey. The castle island is surrounded by a wide moat, fed by the Schlautbach, an original arm of the Münsterische Aa. The buildings are surrounded by a large English landscape park, which still reveals the regular Baroque garden. In the park stands a small chapel from the 17th century.

Buildings

Access to the castle island is provided in the south by a brick bridge over the moat, which leads to a gate flanked by Baroque pillars. The pillars bear putti and were designed around 1733 by Johann Conrad Schlaun. The same applies to the curved retaining wall and pillars, which stand in the castle garden and are crowned with vases. The buildings of the symmetrical complex, like Haus Stapel 2.3 kilometers away, were mostly built from Baumberg sandstone. Only the upper floors of two buildings from the late 17th century feature half-timbered construction.

Coming from the south, the viewer first notices two elongated, single-story farm buildings with hipped roofs. They occupy the entire eastern and western long sides of the former outer bailey island. The manor house stands as a transverse building at the northern end of the castle island. Its basic form resembles a Westphalian farmhouse. Adjoining it at both ends to the south are the outbuildings like side wings. These include, on the west side, a castle chapel with a roof turret, heavily altered in the late 19th century, and a coach house, whose wall anchors in the form of the year 1862 announce the end of its renovation. Opposite these buildings on the other side of the island are a massive, three-story gate tower from 1674, which offers a second entrance to the castle island, and an adjoining rent office from approximately the same period. The gate has an original call hole in the form of a lion's head on the outer facade and the inscription "WERDA". A brick, three-arched bridge leads to it, which can be reached via an avenue about 470 meters long.

The rectangular manor house, measuring approximately 48 x 13 meters, rises over three stories and is topped by a high, tile-covered gable roof with dormers. Its core - like the octagonal stair tower on the north facade with a slate helmet, bricked-up entrance, and coat of arms decoration - dates from 1562. Iron anchors in the form of the year 1654 bear witness to the subsequent addition of the western part of the building, and a short section at the eastern end was only added in 1711. The three-tiered gables of the building, typical of the Münsterland, are designed as a show facade. Their steps have spherical, semicircular finials, whose surfaces are filled with a shell relief. The east gable shows, in addition to the alliance coat of arms of the von Twickel and von Droste-Vischering families, the year 1711. The floor division is clearly visible there by means of string courses. A portal extension in the style of Flemish Early Baroque is placed centrally on the south facade facing the courtyard. Although located in the symmetrical center of the manor house, the five-axis structure itself is asymmetrical. The entrance, flanked by half-columns, is not in the central middle of the extension, but is shifted slightly to the west. It is crowned by a round-arched gable with a coat of arms in the gable field. The two stories of the extension are vertically articulated by Tuscan-Ionic pilasters and have an elaborately designed cornice as an upper finish.

Interior

In the western half of the manor house is the Knight's Hall from 1651, which occupies the entire width of the building. The boards and the simply ornamented beams of the wooden beam ceiling are visible. This is the only visible wooden beam ceiling from this period in Westphalia, as it was customary at the time of construction to conceal the ceiling structure under stucco decorations. At the front of the room, which has a two-tone tiled floor, stands a large ornamental fireplace of Dutch type with a sequence of coats of arms that runs frieze-like around the fireplace. There are two other fireplaces in the manor house from 1562 and 1565, which are also remarkable from an art historical perspective.