Narrated by Adrie Verboord Landgoed Steenenburg Through the Centuries | Part 1: The Brabant Nobility

You walk down the long avenue lined with majestic, centuries-old beech trees on both sides, and sure enough, there looms the beautifully restored Steenenburg Castle. Until someone whispers in your ear: “This isn’t the real castle; this is the gatehouse of the former castle.”

So what do you think? A gatehouse? Something as beautiful as a gatehouse? A former residence for the staff? For the guards, the stablehands, the gardeners, and who knows who else? Where was the actual castle, then?

I’d love to tell you all about it, but you’ll have to be willing to travel back in time with me eight centuries. To the era of the nobility, of dukes and counts, of lords as feudal overlords, of their estates and their power. Are you ready for that? Well, here we go. What’s that? Wait a minute? Oh, you’re not just going to go off with a stranger. Very sensible. You’ll be taking this journey through time with Adrie Verboord, president of the Onsenoort Local History Society. This organization is dedicated to preserving knowledge about the local history of the municipality of Heusden. That includes Landgoed Steenenburg. It takes a great deal of knowledge to talk about it—to share that fascinating history spanning many centuries with you all. All right, here we go.

Let’s start with how the region was divided back then. We had our own Duke of Brabant here. Keep in mind, Brabant wasn’t just what is now North Brabant, but the entire region, which extended all the way to Brussels. We were a border region, because the territories of the Count of Holland and the Count of Gelre bordered the territory of the Duke of Brabant right here in this area. A sort of tripoint, in other words. Anyway, we’re talking about the Brabant of that time.

Within the vast territory of the Duchy of Brabant, there were a number of important noble families, all of whom possessed significant estates and, consequently, power. In the area west of ’s-Hertogenbosch, these were the Counts of Grave and Cuijk. They referred to this area as “Nije-Cuijk,” hence the later name Nieuwkuijk.

To the west of the territory of the Lords of Cuijk lay the domain of the Lords of Drunen. They were neighbors, but there was no power dynamic between the Lords of Cuijk and the Lords of Drunen. However, the Lords of Drunen belonged to a lower rank of nobility than those of Cuijk. The Lords of Drunen lived in a fortified house, the House of Drunen, later also known as Drunen Castle.

To complete the division of the entire area from Vlijmen to Drunen, the territory east of Nije-Cuijk belonged to the Lords of Onsenoort.