Gretschins-Herrenfeld (Ochsenberg)

The castle stands on a small, rocky tor east of the hamlet of Gretschins, surrounded by an outer defensive wall that follows the natural contour on three sides where steep cliffs provide protection. Inside that ring wall the courtyard once held service buildings and a cistern, the courtyard area now largely wooded and preserved as ruinous earthworks.

At the heart of the site is a massive, tower-house structure that reads as a bergfried-like keep, a tall defensive residential tower. Dendrochronology links the tower to the early thirteenth century and later phases of work; its preserved height reaches roughly 22 metres. Wall thicknesses approach 1.75 metres and the floors are about four metres apart; the upper sequence preserves four or five levels.

The main tower’s plan has been interpreted in two ways: either as two square towers set side by side or as one rectangular tower subdivided internally. One reading identifies a north-eastern block of about four storeys and a lower south-western section arranged as separate apartments. At a later date an internal partition wall was inserted without bonding into the outer masonry; the seam between the old and new work can be followed up to the fourth floor.

Interior surfaces show lime mortar plaster used on room walls. The lowermost chamber has no openings to the outside and served as a pantry or cellar beneath the kitchen area, while two higher living zones were connected by passageways. An elevated entrance on the west wall provided access to the living levels, and interior fittings include a fireplace, arched niches that served as smoke outlets, and a garderobe set into the wall.

Window openings vary by level: the fourth and fifth floors display three-part round-arched windows as well as windows with straight lintels, reflecting different building campaigns. Around 1300 the tower received a crenellated parapet; about a century later an extra storey was added using a different building stone than the lower masonry. Work around 1500 rebuilt the upper levels using bollen stones at the top while the lower walls contain tuff blocks. Traces of an earlier gabled roof survive in the fabric, and after fourteenth-century alterations the summit was finished with a flat roof and parapets.

The curtain wall encircling the central structure was broad and followed the rock’s profile; within it the layout of support buildings and the cistern are archaeologically visible. The present opening into the inner court was produced in recent times by breaking through the older wall fabric. The castle stands as a restored and conserved ruin, with stabilisation and repair carried out in the twentieth century and archaeological work undertaken in the early twenty-first century.