Grönsö Castle

Grönsö Castle, Enköping, Sweden, is a manor house created by Swedish landowners in the early 17th century and later altered in a restrained Neoclassical, or “Gustavian,” manner. The estate became notable through its association with Johan Skytte, tutor to the future King Gustavus Adolphus, later chancellor of Uppsala University and a member of the Swedish Privy Council, and it developed as a landed seat with a long-lived orchard that dates back to the 1620s.

The place hosted a small rural community from at least the Middle Ages. In the 1500s the settlement comprised five farms, and the medieval manor Utö hus stood across the water, visible from what would become the manor park. One of the village farms was given to Johan Skytte by Prince Gustavus Adolphus before he became king. Between 1608 and 1609 Skytte acquired the remaining farms and established the present manorial estate; a contemporary note from 1611 records that building work on the manor house had just begun.

Ownership passed within the Skytte family to Johan’s son Bengt and then to Bengt’s daughter Maria, and the property remained in that family throughout the 1600s before reverting to the Crown. During the 1700s the estate changed hands several times. Under the Falkenberg family the house received repairs and rebuilding that simplified its external character to the form seen today. In the latter half of the 18th century the physician David von Schultzenheim owned the manor; he remodelled many interiors in the plain Neoclassical taste associated with King Gustav III, enlarged the surrounding park, and had a “Chinese pavilion” erected and decorated inside with shells and rocks brought from East Asia.

In 1820 Reinhold Fredrik von Ehrenheim, Marshal of the Court, bought the estate. The von Ehrenheim family have owned the manor since then and continue to live there. The estate’s orchard was planted in 1623 by Johan Ludvigsson, who had served as royal gardener to King Charles IX. During replanting work in the 1890s coins dated 1634 were discovered among the roots of an old tree. The owners today report that the orchard still yields apples and that it produces apple juice, and they identify cultivars such as Åkerö, Ingrid Marie, and Gravenstein.