Château de Horst — the midnight coach

OVERVIEW

The château of Rhode-Saint-Pierre, also called Horst Castle, stands at Holsbeek in Flemish Brabant and is counted among the most beautiful medieval castles in Belgium. Its greenish colour comes from glauconite, a clay-rich stone. A 'Rode Castellum' is cited in 1100; in 1263 it belonged to Jean de Horst. It was one of the first castles of Brabant to trade its medieval character for a courtly Renaissance residence.

HISTORY

The lordship passed in the 13th century to the Lantwyck family, one of whom married Margaret of Brabant, a natural daughter of Duke John I, on 27 March 1292. The district lay strategically near Leuven, until the mid-14th century the greatest city of the duchy of Brabant. The oldest part is the great keep, with narrow loopholes and four gargoyles carved as wyverns.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The villagers say that every night at midnight the ghost of the lord of Rode comes in a coach drawn by six wild horses out of the wood by the ruins of the wine press, gallops down the lime avenue and enters the keep 'by who knows what magic'; sinister lights glow at the tower's loopholes until the coach crosses the drawbridge and returns to the ruins. The soul of this 15th-century lord cannot rest for having killed his chaplain. In one version, the priest began Mass before the lord arrived and was killed for the slight. In the other, the old and jealous lord saw his young wife sign to the chaplain to keep silent — she had secretly saved a condemned poacher, now passing them as a bridegroom — and stabbed the priest to death in the coach; his wife went mad and died, and he spent the rest of his life alone, pursued by visions. The French article marks the two versions 'citation needed'. The lord in the legend is identified as Almeric I Pynnock (1422–1461).

VISITING

Visiting arrangements are not recorded in the source.