Castle Jansgeleen

Castle Jansgeleen, now erroneously called "Sint-Jansgeleen" or "Sint Jansgeleen", was a medieval castle in the little village of Spaubeek, in the Dutch province of Limburg. Spaubeek is located in the municipality of Beek, about 3 km south of the town of Geleen."ANWB Topografische Atlas Nederland", Topografische Dienst and ANWB, 2005.] Spaubeek was a separate municipality until 1982, when it was merged with Beek. [Ad van der Meer and Onno Boonstra, "Repertorium van Nederlandse gemeenten", KNAW, 2006. [http://www.knaw.nl/cfdata/publicaties/detail.cfm?boeken__ordernr=20061061] ]

The history of Spaubeek was closely connected to that of the castle of Jansgeleen or Sint Jansgeleen. This castle, built as House Spaubeek at a bench in the small Geleen river in the 13th C., was the first seat of the former County of Geleen in the 16th C. It got its name "Heer Jansgelene" after one of the former owners, Lord Jan Rode van Opsinnich in the 15th C., but was later erroneously renamed as Sint Jansgeleen after St. John the Baptist.

The castle, already in a bad shape at the end of the 19th C, and further damaged by the mine galleries of the nearby big Maurits mine at Geleen in the 1920's, was finally demolished in the 1930's. Only the buildings of the water mill ("Jansmolen", hence "Sint Jansmolen") and the forecourt (16th C.) have remained, now both provincial monuments. M.J.H.A. Schrijnemakers 1985: "Sint Jansgeleen. Kasteel, hoeve en molens", [Series 'Wat Baek ós bud', 9] , Beek-L: Drukkerij Econoom / Heemkunde-vereniging Beek-L..]

References

External links

* [http://www.kuijsten.de/atlas/li/spaubeek.html Map of the former municipality in 1868]