On the Hesbaye plateau, a few kilometers from Liège, a slate spire rises above the trees of Alleur. This is Waroux Castle: a square keep, a round flint curtain wall, a moat, and seven centuries of history. Private wars, counts, canons, Resistance fighters and American officers: its walls have seen them all come and go. Here is its story, from its medieval origins to the present day.
Where is Waroux Castle?
The castle stands on Rue de Waroux in Alleur, a village that belongs to the municipality of Ans, in the province of Liège. It sits at an altitude of about 182 meters, one of the highest points in Hesbaye, which explains why its slender spire can be seen from so far away. All around: fields, a farm, a listed park and a long avenue of century-old lime trees.
A medieval lordship
In the 13th century, Waroux was a lordship under the County of Loon (today’s Belgian Limburg). It belonged to a family that bore the name of the place: the de Waroux. A certain Breton the Younger is already mentioned in 1234.
The present castle still bears traces of those origins: its square keep and its circular curtain wall of flint and sandstone, tall and pierced only by arrow slits, are medieval. It is said to have been built around 1300, in the thick of the war against the Awans. It is one of the few circular castles in Belgium.
1298–1335: the War of the Awans and the Waroux
The name Waroux remains tied to one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège: the War of the Awans and the Waroux. For nearly forty years, from 1298 to 1335, two great Hesbaye lineages and their allies fought each other. It all supposedly began with a secret marriage… We tell this story, worthy of a novel, in a separate article: The War of the Awans and the Waroux.
The estate still carries the scars. A windmill stood at Waroux in 1323: it was destroyed during the war, then probably rebuilt on the same spot, since a document from 1609 mentions a “neuf moullin” (a new mill).
Among the lords of the line, history remembers William II, known as the Younger, leader of the Waroux at the start of the conflict, Raes de Warfusée, killed in 1327, and another Raes de Warfusée, burgomaster of Huy, who died without a direct heir in 1407.
The Merodes, Counts of Waroux
In 1525, after centuries, the estate left the Waroux family through marriage. It passed to Richard de Merode (died 1539), husband of Agnès de Warfusée. The Merodes, one of the greatest noble families of the old Low Countries, kept it for more than a century and a half: William, then John, made Count of Waroux in 1623, another John, Eitel-Frederick, and finally his son Alexander, who had only three daughters.
The Clercx de Waroux and the 18th-century castle
At the end of the 17th century, the Merode sisters sold the estate to Michel Clercx: bricks dated 1696 still bear his coat of arms. The Clercx de Waroux family would live there until 1925.
It was this family that gave the castle its present face. The polygonal inner courtyard mixes brick and dressed stone, and at the end of the 18th century the rooms received refined decoration: stuccowork, fireplaces with fluted pilasters, and canvases by the Liège painter Pierre-Michel de Lovinfosse. Opposite, the farm was enlarged: a residential wing dated 1645, three wings from 1724, and a gatehouse with dovecote from 1724 bearing the Clercx coat of arms.
The secret of the Lovinfosse room: one of the canvases, to the right of the fireplace, swings open to reveal a folding altar. During the French Revolution, Mass was celebrated there in secret, and a priest could be hidden there if the alarm was raised.
The Everard de Harzirs and the Second World War
After 1925, the castle was bought by Francis Everard de Harzir. For his family, the war would be terrible. Francis died of a heart attack in Brussels on May 10, 1940, the day of the German invasion. His son Alain fell on May 28, 1940 at Passendale, during the Battle of the Lys. Philippe, an officer in the Secret Army, was shot dead on September 4, 1944 during the fighting at Alleur, while going to the aid of a wounded man. Jacques fell gravely ill on a military mission in Germany in May 1945 and remained severely disabled.
The Germans occupied the castle from 1940. Yet it occasionally sheltered hidden Allied airmen and Jews. In 1944–1945, the Americans set up a military field hospital in Alleur, and its officers were billeted at Waroux. In what is now the wedding hall, a mirror still bears bullet marks.
Adèle de Harenne, Francis’s widow, lived at the castle until her death in 1982.
From the family to the municipality of Ans
- October 25, 1977: the castle and the farm are listed as protected monuments.
- 1986: the castle is bought by Dr. Léon Janssis.
- January 2005: it becomes the property of the municipality of Ans.
- Today, it is part of Wallonia’s exceptional heritage. It houses offices and meetings, hosts the weddings of Ans residents, and has staged major exhibitions (Folon in 2006, Rodin in 2007, Félicien Rops in 2008).
To explore the rooms, the park and the farm, read our guide Visiting Waroux Castle.
Waroux, a setting for Oscar’s Notebook
A spire piercing the Hesbaye fog, an old vendetta, an altar hidden behind a painting, bullet marks in a mirror… Waroux Castle has everything a crime novel could want. It stands in Alleur, a stone’s throw from Ans station and the beet fields that Victor Lenoir and Oscar Blanc cross in The Empty Wall, the second volume of Oscar’s Notebook.
Oscar’s Notebook
The investigations of Oscar Blanc and Victor Lenoir take place in and around Liège, from Guillemins station to Fort Loncin, amid fog, mystery and humor. The series is published in English.
