Moeland Castle

So-called "Moeland Castle", now "Saint Anthony Monastery Rest Home", located in front of the Maria Mediaares hospital and opposite the "Saint Vincent Asyty" and inhabited since 1888 by the Sisters of Charity of the Risen Savior. Castle consisting of a main building, parallel to the street, with cobbled courtyard with artful wrought iron fence in Louis XVI style and flanked by two right-angled wings. English garden now largely occupied by the hospital and nurses' school Maria Middelares. Oldest part (street side main building) built in 1776-78 by Hendrik van der Sare, lord of Manegem. Later sold to Everaert van Geelhauts, mayor of Beveren and in 1832 to Bernard de Munck, mayor of Sint-Niklaas, whose daughter married in 1857 to knight Amedée de Schoutheete de Tervaartt who came to live there and made enlargements for his court. After its purchase in 1888 by the Sisters of Charity, it was successively a home for old ladies, a maternity ward, a clinic for internal diseases. In 1913 a spacious chapel was added to the north. Main building with plastered and painted frame façade in neoclassical style, of nine bays and two storeys under gable roof (ridge parallel to the street, slates). Middle risalite of three bays and three storeys, surmounted by a triangular pediment with trilobate oculus, and on the first floor with a rectangular balcony with wrought iron railing. Bay marked by colossal Ionic pilasters. Slightly elevated ground floor. Arched windows with leak thresholds, ornate blind hoods and wrought iron railings on the upper floor; medallions with classic female head on the parapets. Arched wing door in profiled frame with a keystone with the coats of arms of the families de Schoutheete, de Tervaartt and de Munck. Façade terminated on articulated architrave, corniced frieze and straight cornice. Two wings, perpendicular to the main building, to the south and north of the courtyard, modified around 1935 to a design by architect H. De Boom (Sint-Niklaas). Six bays and two storeys under a gable roof (ridge perpendicular to the street, slates). Rhythmic horizontal and vertical division of the brick façades by plastered and white-painted pilasters, façade, architrave and cornice. Pilasters of the ground floor with Ionic capital, on the upper floor with moulded capital. Arched windows in flat, plastered frame with keystone on the first floor; bluestone leak thresholds. Gables of two bays surmounted by the gable, with trilobate oculus, elaborated as a pediment. Ground floor with a blind round arch per bay in profiled plastered frame. Garden façade in a completely different style (decorative brick architecture), from 1866, presumably designed by architect P. Van Haver. Brick façade on bluestone plinth, with seven bays and two storeys. Middle risalite with square tower crowning of three sections with neo-Gothic elements (pointed arch and rose windows), coat of arms and decorative brick friezes. Slightly arched windows in plastered frame, on the ground floor with wooden shutter boxes; ditto gull-wing door; diamond-shaped mason's marks on the parapet of the upper floor. On either side, a room projecting beyond the façade line with rounded corners and plastered, colossal pilasters between the windows. In the outer wall of the left wing, bluestone memorial stone with text: "Primam Hanc Petram Werner Eques de Schoutheete de Tervaartt, anno MDCCCLXVI Juvenis Posuit". Interior with former dining room in neo-Egyptian style, possibly erected as a Masonic temple between 1866 and 1877 after engravings from Description de l.Egypt, ou recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Egypt pendant l'expédition de l'arme française, Paris, 1821-30, 24 volumes, published by C.L.F. Panckoucke. Rectangular room with eleven bas-reliefs executed by Auguste Bonnefoy (Brussels) and painted with symbolic colours by Arnold de Castro (Sint-Niklaas). Iconography: pharaohs and figures from the underworld of the 20th dynasty of Ramesses II, copies of reliefs from Philae, Karnak, Denderah and Erdfou, recorded on site in 1798 by order of Emperor Napoleon and collected by Panckoucke. Ceiling with zodiac from the temple of Hator in Denderah. To the north, spacious chapel on a rectangular plan, of three bays and two storeys. Under wolf roof (ridge parallel to the street, slates). Ground floor with medical services, upper floor with prayer room. Bays and corners marked by plastered and painted pilasters. Ground floor windows arched in flat frame with roller shutter boxes; Chapel windows round-arched with flat frame and stained glass windows. Closing façade at the top decorated by plastered basket arches, resting on pilasters. Central oculus. Gable end with articulated architrave, flat frieze and cornice. Bluestone memorial stone in the outer wall: "Hunc Lapidem Benedixit R.a.D.a.a. De Schrijver Canonicus & Director et Posuit Rev. Mater Superiorissa Liguoria Hac die lla. Augusti Anno Salutis 1913". Three-aisled interior with slender cast-iron columns and plastered, basket-arched barrel vault above central nave and apse. BUYTAERT J., personal archive. BRUYNINCX G., Following Vincentius; the adventure of the Sisters of Charity of the Risen Savior, Sint-Niklaas 1810-1960, historical sketch, Sint-Niklaas, 1960. DEWULF M., The Egyptian Hall of the Castle Moerland in Sint-Niklaas, erected as a temple of the Rosicrucians, AOKW 81, 1978, p. 34-43.

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