Het Oude Loo

Het Oude Loo in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is a late medieval hunting lodge built in the fifteenth century under the authority of the Duchy of Guelders, and its oldest fabric dates to that century. Erected as a compact country house for hunting near the royal forest clearing known as Het Loo, the building became part of an important royal domain and later played a continuing role in the affairs of Dutch rulers and foreign occupants.

The house first appears in records in 1439 as the property of Udo Talholt, a councillor to the duke of Guelders who had lent the duke a substantial sum and who may have commissioned the original building. In the mid-sixteenth century the estate passed to the Bentinck family, who expanded the house around 1540 by adding new wings to the rear, and ownership later moved through members of the D’Isendoorn à Blois family and several regional noble houses.

On 27 November 1684 stadtholder William III purchased the house and its grounds. William found the modest hunting lodge too small for his household, and construction soon began on the much larger Palace Het Loo nearby. Until that royal purchase the great hall of the house had contained a hidden Roman Catholic chapel, which ceased when the estate entered stadtholder hands.

Political upheaval altered the property at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1795 stadtholder William V fled to England during the revolutionary wars, and French revolutionary forces seized Orange family possessions. During the occupation 3,000 French troops were quartered at the two residences on the estate, including Het Oude Loo. In 1806 Napoleon made his brother Louis king of Holland; in the summer of that year the new king took up residence at Het Loo and ordered the lodge’s surrounding moat to be filled in, an action the king linked to a childhood prophecy about drowning.

Nineteenth-century uses included the Royal Loo Hawking Club, which made the castle its base between 1839 and 1855. The club maintained a room within the house and attracted international members; Prince Alexander served as chairman and Prince William, later William III, joined as a member. In the early twentieth century Queen Wilhelmina commissioned a full restoration under the direction of the well-known Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers; the project reinstated the water around the house and introduced a number of stylistic alterations, with work completed after the architect’s death in 1921.

By 1948 the roof was judged unsafe and special safety measures were taken. A later restoration campaign beginning in 1968 removed many of the earlier stylistic additions, reinstated earlier tower forms and, when that program was completed in 1976, also brought the adjacent palace gardens back to their historical arrangement. The state acquired the estate in 1968 and leases the house to the royal family for their use. In modern times the house has hosted foreign dignitaries, including a six-week stay by the Japanese crown prince in 2006, and in 2022 the king made the property available to shelter Ukrainian refugees; a commemorative Gelderse Roos tree and a plaque mark that gesture, and the temporary occupants left in January 2023.