Kasteeldomein Blauwhuys

Merelbeke-Melle, Belgium, Belgium

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Kasteeldomein Blauwhuys is a historic estate in the village of Melle, part of the municipality of Merelbeke in East Flanders, Belgium, centred on a castle known as Kasteel Blauwhuys or Lammens Kasteel and a large park along the right bank of the Scheldt river.

The site probably began as a medieval farmstead that gradually evolved in the 16th century into a moated pleasure house (hof van plaisance), and from at least 1615 until 1785 it was owned by the Triest family, who also held the nearby Hof Ter Wallen and used Blauwhuys as a hunting lodge or guest house connected by a drive to their main residence.

Between the mid‑18th and late‑19th centuries the building was repeatedly modified and enlarged, and in 1884–1885 the architect baron A. Verhaegen added a dominant neo‑Gothic wing in the style of the Sint‑Lucas school of Ghent, creating a three‑storey castle that combines an older, simpler core with a more elaborate, high brick annex, while the park, laid out in English landscape style in 1848 by a German landscaper, contains a pond, a network of canals and ditches, paths, and a small garden pavilion on a hill.

Since 1886 the estate has remained in the hands of the Verhaegen family, and the castle and its surrounding landscape are protected as built and cultural‑historical heritage, making Kasteeldomein Blauwhuys a quiet, privately owned monument that can be admired from outside and from the paths that cross the park, while serving as a local piece of Melle’s and Merelbeke’s rural and aristocratic history.