Château de Beausart

Grez-Doiceau, Belgium, Belgium

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Château de Beausart (also called the château‑ferme de Beausart) is a large, historic estate in the village of Bossut‑Gottechain, part of the municipality of Grez‑Doiceau in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium, set in a domain of about 200 hectares that includes a château, an imposing former abbey farm, a chapel and a wooded area along the Beausart stream.

The site’s origins date to the 12th century, when in 1155 the chapter of Nivelles gave the lands of Beausart and an older chapel dedicated to Saint Gertrude to the abbey of Aulne; the Cistercian monks then built a priory where about forty monks lived, and the chapel became an important pilgrimage site that also led to annual disturbances in the countryside.

When the abbey transformed the priory into a farm around 1450, the original chapel was destroyed and a new chapel dedicated to Saint Gertrude was incorporated into the farm building, serving as a domestic chapel for the farm workers, and much of this 17th‑ and 18th‑century farm, with its remaining chapel, still exists today.

After the French burned the abbey of Aulne, Beausart was sold in 1796 to Grégoire van Dormael, whose daughter married the Louvain notary Guillaume Roberti; the latter bought the Beausart wood from the Dutch state in 1828, and his son, senator Jules Roberti, then built the present neo‑classical château around 1864, while the main farm buildings were largely constructed in the second half of the 18th century.