Castle Brederode

Castle Brederode stands in Santpoort-Zuid, Netherlands, and was built by medieval Dutch nobility, the van Brederode family.

The site was established in the second half of the 1200s by William I van Brederode as part of the high lordship of Brederode, held from the count of Holland. The place name comes from a cleared woodland known as Brede Roede, on which the castle was raised. In its earliest phase the stronghold consisted only of a single residential tower.

Around 1300 Dirk II (Thierry II) van Brederode removed that original tower and put up a square-plan castle in its place. During the Hook and Cod wars the castle came under attack in 1351, when Gijsbrecht (II) van Nijenrode laid siege. After the defenders surrendered the structure suffered such damage that it was torn down. Following a reconciliation with the counts, rebuilding took place in 1354; the castle’s present ground plan stems from that reconstruction. After this work it was used by William van Brederode as a base for the Hook faction rather than being kept as the family’s principal home.

Conflict returned in the 15th century, when in 1426 the Cod faction destroyed the southern section of the castle. William van Brederode was forbidden to repair or strengthen the damaged portion, and only the northern part was restored later, in 1464. The fortress was plundered again during the Kaas- en Broodvolk uprising of 1492 and fell out of habitation after that event. In 1568 ownership passed to the States of Holland.

During the war for Haarlem, in 1573 the Protestant Lancelot van Brederode was executed and the castle was sacked and set alight. The burned ruin then faced invasion by drifting dune sand. In 1579 a collateral branch of the Brederode family received the lordship on loan from Holland, but when Wolfert van Brederode died in 1679 the remains reverted to the States of Holland. With the Batavian Republic’s establishment in 1795 the property became state-owned. In the 1800s the government carried out one of the country’s early restorations, approached in a romantic style. The ruins were later designated the first national monument of the Netherlands, with national monument number 37110. State ownership and management continued until 15 January 2016, when responsibility was handed to the national monuments organization (Stichting Monumentenbezit / Nationale Monumentenorganisatie).