1/3 Landhuis Burgst has turned into a ruin after a fire (image: Omroep Brabant).
“The house is not special, there are more of them,” said former director René Bastiaanse of the Brabant Historical Information Center once about the monumental house on Burgst estate. “But,” he added immediately, “It is beautifully in the green on a sort of enclave in the Breda residential area Haagse Beemden. It radiates grandeur.” After 235 years, this monumental country house was completely destroyed by fire on Saturday night.
More than twenty years ago, historian René Bastiaanse visited the estate for the ‘De Wandeling’ program of Omroep Brabant. In the episode of the program he gets a unique look at the now destroyed house. To get there at all, he has to go through a fence that is open for the occasion.
The estate had 12 hectares in 2001 at that time, but was once 450 hectares (more than 600 football fields) large. Although the territory is just a fraction of what it once was, it is a nice tipper before the country house looms between the trees.
In 1790 the building was built by Cornelis Nahuys, Mr Van Burgst. The estate itself is older and goes back to the twelfth century.
If René describes the house, he points to the front door in the middle of the country house, where you first have to walk through two massive pillars. Two outbuildings have been built for staff on the sides of the house. “There were between ten and fourteen servants active at the time,” says René.
In the house, paintings and furniture remind us of the past. There is a large painting with sea view in the hallway. “This is specially made to measure. This kind of housing is so large and has such large walls that paintings were specially made to dress those walls.”
View here what the house looked like in 2001:
See more of the walk? Watch old episodes of the program via Brabant+.
At the very top of the attic, after at least three floors have risen, there are several rooms. Everything is smaller here and the ceilings are low. “Servants also lived here,” René knows. “It is less comfortable here, it is dark and there is no heating.”
All this is now gone and a smoking ruin is what remains. How the fire originated is still unclear. There were eighteen people in the building when the fire broke out, they were all taken care of by the fire brigade. On Monday, the police will investigate the cause of the fire.
View images of Saturday night’s fire here:
