Torup Castle

Torup Castle stands in Bara municipality, Sweden, and the standing residence was built in 1537 by the noblewoman Görvel Fadersdotter (Sparre).

The castle was erected in 1537 for Görvel Fadersdotter’s son, though Görvel retained ownership after her son died. During the mid 1500s the complex was enlarged under Görvel’s third husband, the Danish noble Lave Brahe, and the estate passed by inheritance into the Danish noble family Grubbe. In the years when King Christian IV visited the site frequently the manor belonged to Sigvard Grubbe. After Görvel’s death in 1605 her properties passed to the Danish crown and to King Christian IV.

Under Christian IV soldiers undertook extensive water works around the castle, and those interventions continued in phases for more than a century. Workers deepened lakes, cut canals, built dams and strengthened shores in the area around the house; these alterations culminated in the final draining of the surrounding lake in 1775.

In 1647 Corfitz Ulfeldt bought the estate. The property was taken into Swedish crown hands in 1660 and later returned in 1735 to Ulfeldt’s grandson, J. Beck. On 21 May 1775 a fatal boating accident occurred on the lake close to the house in which Cornet Fredrik Trolle, his aunt Fredrika Harmens and the sisters Brita Sofia Trolle and Elisabet Augusta Trolle drowned.

A rural uprising reached Torup in 1811 when a crowd reported at roughly one thousand on one count and between 1,000 and 1,500 on another gathered in protest; estate buildings suffered partial damage before the disturbance was suppressed. In 1812 Court Marshal Gustaf Julius Coyet purchased the partly ruined house and set about restoration. The Coyet family retained ownership through the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Gösta Coyet associated with the estate until 1924 and Henriette Coyet until 1941. Ownership passed by marriage into the von Leithner family and the property was sold to Malmö municipality in 1970, the heirs keeping a legal right to live on the estate until 2035; those heirs lived on the property until 2012 and then gave up that right earlier than planned.