Barntrup Castle

Anna von Canstein did just that. She herself died before her castle in Barntrup was ready to move into. So she left it to one of her three sons, and subsequently to many more generations of the von Kerssenbrock family, right up to the present day.

Barntrup is a small town in the Lipper Bergland region of North Rhine-Westphalia, near the border with Lower Saxony, roughly between Detmold and Hamelin. The castle, built between 1584 and 1592, is located on the edge of the old town and blends into the city wall, which has only been preserved in this part of the town. The north side of the castle faces the countryside. It is therefore both a town and country castle.

Before the castle was built, the „Niedere Hof“ in Barntrup had been owned by the von Kerßenbrock family for almost 100 years. In 1496, Gerlach von Kerßenbrock received the village of Barntrup as a pledge from the Counts of Lippe. In 1564, they repaid the loan and the Kerßenbrocks' brief rule over Barntrup came to an end. Twenty years later, construction of the castle began on behalf of Anna von Canstein. Her husband, Franz von Kerssenbrock, had already died in 1576. Her name was actually Anna von Kerssenbrock, but her maiden name, von Canstein, is always mentioned in the documents. The castle never had a ruling function, but it expressed the aspirations of the then up-and-coming Kerssenbrock family.

Recommendations on this topic:

• Weser Renaissance cultural circle
• Faces of the Weser Renaissance
• architecture-nrw
  
• Teutoburg Forest
• Optical fibre image archive for Westphalia
  
• Article in the Lippische Landes-Zeitung newspaper
• Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Barntrup Castle (Lippische Kulturlandschaften 12), Detmold: Lippischer Heimatbund, 2009.