Castle Hoensbroek - medieval portion

It's been a few weeks since we've gone to it (April 17th, to be exact), but I have to mention Castle Hoensbroek, in the Netherlands. John and I decided to take a break from getting our house in order--getting furniture, putting our bed and dining table and chairs together, etc., and do some actual touristy stuff.

John, bless his heart, didn't tell me that we were going to a castle. A real castle! I was so freakin' excited. The day was beautiful, and it actually decided to warm up a bit after the bitter cold of March and early April; the roundabouts along the highway showed bright yellow daffodils and red tulips. Hoensbroek is not that far from the little town of Susterseel, Germany, where we live to the Netherlands--it would take me less than a fifteen minute walk to cross the border. The castle, however, is a bit farther out:


View Larger Map


A 20-minute drive, max, about the time it'd take to drive from home to Tacoma.

That just blows my mind. Just a short drive to get to some real, amazing history, I mean a castle for God's sake!!! This is not Disney, people! It's medieval! With a moat! With water in it!

Words simply do not come close to describing how thrilled I was, and so I won't even bother, because, damn! A castle! Now I'm in Europe for sure, I thought.

There is no way one could pass the castle on the street and not see it. It's easy to see the spires from a mile or so away. So we came up to it, and parked in the parking lot, and I had to get a good shot of the whole thing before I ever went in it.



Oh, it doesn't look that large from this side...but there's another whole big piece of it on the other side. There are two sections; this side, which is the oldest section, completely surrounded by the moat, and before you can enter it, you have to cross two drawbridges, first through the newer part (picture on the right).

And then through the older part:

Just to get a better idea of the orientation, below is a picture of John standing at the entrance of the first drawbridge. You can see the second drawbridge through the arch behind him.

Upon going across the first drawbridge and through the first arch, I felt so overwhelmed, I almost wept. Yes, yes, that sounds silly, but I really did. I was there, experiencing a very, very old piece of history. It had been a dream of mine ever since I was a child to visit Europe and see real castles. It didn't hit me until then that here I was, doing it at last. Weird, huh? I'd stayed in Geilenkirchen for more than a month, and that's an old city itself. I could see how old the buildings were there.

I suppose it's because Germany and the Netherlands is also modern, with pretty much every modern convenience. They even have Safeway-like grocery stores, and dollar stores (I guess I should say, Euro stores), cell phones (they call them "handies" here), computers, the Internet--all of it. I caught traces of medieval architecture here and there as we traveled around the countryside looking for a house to rent--there is even a castle tower in the town of Gangelt that is privately owned and in which a family still lives. You can see parts of the castle wall that is now part of someone's garden wall.

But it just didn't hit me until I saw this castle.

The first archway opened up into a huge courtyard. A flash of horses and grooms holding their bridles came to me, taking the horses into the far building (opposite the oldest part of the castle). I could imagine it, how the lord of the castle might dismount and hand the reins to the groom or stable boy who'd run up as soon as he'd enter.

Whether that happened in that particular spot, I don't know; there's no information on it that I can find. But that's okay--I'll just let my imagination fill it all in. ;-)

I understood from the pamphlet that there were more than a few parts to this castle--the dates of construction went from the 13th century to the 18th. We went through a small portion of the later part, but John hurried me through these to the medieval portion, and I didn't demur, as I thought I'd like to see that first.

But...I don't know what it was, but as soon as I stepped into the tower, I began to feel sick to my stomach. Now, I'm not claustrophobic, and in fact I rather like cosy closed-in places. Plus, the first room was not at all small, or at least, no smaller than the bathroom in our house. Well, I'm a writer, and I write historicals, and nothing was going to keep me from exploring this tower, because this was research, damn it! So I gritted my teeth and took out my camera, determined to take as many pictures as possible.

Of course, I had to take a picture of armor.

You'll see the armor as soon as you enter the medieval portion of the castle.

Then there are the other levels...but before you go to them, you need to go up these extremely narrow stairs. Now, I'm not a tall person, 5' 3" max. But there was no way I could go up these stairs without occasionally having to duck my head and pull in my elbows.

This tower was used as defense against enemies. Now, that armor above is no taller than I. If I went up those stairs without armor, having to bend my head down and banging my elbows against the stairwell wall, I do not see how someone with armor could have done it in any speedy manner, if at all. At most, I would suppose that if a knight had to go up these stairs, he would have to go up them with chain maille at most, and no helmet.

So if you ever write of a knight going up in a tower, do not have him run up in armor. No way, no how. He could go up in a quick pace--not running--with the minimum of body protection.

However, the narrowness of the stairs does point to strategic defense. Let's say you pack away a lot of provisions in that tower (that is possible, as there are fireplaces) and the enemy entered the castle. Reinforcements were coming. But then the enemy has entered the tower...

Trust me when I say that there is no way more than one person can go up those stairs. It would be so very easy to grab a spear and skewer a non-armored soldier, and kick him down the stairs, and if there was anyone behind him, they'd all go tumbling down or at best be stuck. If there were more than a few armed defenders in that tower, they could take turns skewering all night until the reinforcements came.

To the right is an interesting hole in the castle wall:

I was told that this is where archers would shoot their arrows, but I have to say I'm not sure how an archer (whether longbow or crossbow) would be able to aim well through this, or how he would be able to position himself so that an arrow could be shot through it. My conclusion is that not a lot of aiming was involved, and that archers generally poked that arrow through the hole and shot, hoping it would hit someone.

Now a rifle or a musket--well, I can see aiming one of those through that hole, and I expect that might well have happened during the 1600s on up.


Below is a fireplace (you could cook food in there if necessary).

To the left, a toilet:













And below is the tower rooftop:

Now this is where you could probably do the most damage: if a lit arrow managed to lodge itself into the roof and caught the timbers on fire, it would most definitely fall and cause a lot of damage, especially on the wooden floor below. However, the exterior roof looks to be slate or other form of rock, so the chances of getting a flaming arrow through that was probably slim. It might be possible for a cannon (in the 1400's) to blast away at the roof and thereby bring down the timbers, but if you note the earlier pictures, you'll see that the tower is round (cylindrical), as is the roof. This does not make for a good target, as the tendency would be for the cannonball to roll or deflect off the relatively small surface area.

Oh, and here I am, climbing up to the very top of the castle tower. I'm smiling, but there are gritted teeth beneath that smile, as I am feeling nauseated.

And then we went back down, this time to the dungeon:

Here is the dungeon itself:

After looking at this dungeon, I would think it'd be unnecessary for anyone to be tortured to extract information (unless it was needed quickly). There is no sconce in which a torch or candle may be set; the window is a tiny thing that may let in some light, but barely, and certainly there is no way anyone could see anything through it, let alone make a jailbreak. Though the room has the size and height comparable to a modern bedroom, enough for a large, modern-day man to stretch out when laying down, it's clearly cold and damp. It's silent--there is no noise that penetrates from the outside, none that I could hear, anyway. The thick-timbered door might let in a loud sound, but it'd be muffled at best.

It's essentially the medieval form of sensory deprivation.

It's possible to turn the lights out in this room (there's electricity to it), and when we did, even though it was a bright sunny day outside, only a vague gray illuminated the interior. I doubt any prisoner would know whether it was full daylight or a cloudy day, but I would venture to say it'd be doubtful whether you could tell much difference between night and day. You couldn't tell what the seasons were--perhaps it might be colder during the winter. Stay in this place for a couple of weeks, maybe months...well, it'd be a strong-minded person who didn't go just a little crazy.

It was with considerable relief that I left the dungeon and the medieval portion...and oddly, as soon as I stepped into the door into 17th century area, my nausea disappeared. Curious, I stepped back into the tower--nausea again. I stepped out--none.

Hmm.