Château de Thy-le-Château

Thy-le-Château has two main parts: the main residence, or manor, the authentic 12th-century section, and the keep, which is much more recent. Together they close off the upper courtyard, known as the main courtyard. The château stands on the edge of today's province of Namur, in Belgium, once the county of Namur, and it was built at a time of friction with the neighboring county of Hainaut. It was first of all a defensive post, one of several the lords owned, where they came from time to time with their trunks.

Two features of the main courtyard at Thy speak to that role. The pillory, the symbol of high justice, is a reminder that from the 12th century on, the lord held the power of life and death over his lands. Wrongdoers were tied to it to be punished or publicly shamed. The well, with its stone curb and about 16 meters (52 feet) deep, supplied water to the people sheltering inside the walls during a siege. At around 12 or 13 meters down, an opening leads to an underground passage, once used by villagers, that is said to run under the village to an old farm. Its exact route has yet to be traced.

On the facade of the residence, the paired windows do not match: three on the side where the lord received visitors, two with trapezoid tracery on the side of his private rooms. Drip moldings run above the windows. The whole is Romanesque, with a Gothic touch that marks the shift between the two styles.

The Lords' Hall at Thy-le-Château, on the second floor of the residence, is considered the largest medieval hall in Wallonia, French-speaking Belgium, by volume, and the second largest in Belgium after the Hall of the Counts in Ghent. It is almost 10 meters (33 feet) high. It is reached by a spiral staircase of 56 steps, almost all original, which turns the opposite way from the usual, counterclockwise.

A large hanging divided the hall in two. On one side lived the lord and his family. On the other was the official part, a kind of courtroom where he received his vassals. The windows still show it: three large ones and two smaller ones, on either side of the fireplace. The ceiling, shaped like an upturned ship's hull, is a reminder that carpenters trained in shipbuilding put their skills to work on castles. Wall cupboards were the room's only storage. Everything else came in chests. A small room next door, the garderobe, holds the latrines. The ammonia and the drafts kept moths away, so clothes were stored there.

An old 19th-century church chair, probably from the church destroyed during the war, serves as the throne at Thy, and the villagers call it that. Worn stone window seats, next to newer sills, hint at where the original building ends and the reconstruction begins.

"I bought it a year and a half ago, with the goal of sharing it. Since I'm from this village myself, I wanted to promote culture and let as many people as possible enjoy this idyllic setting."
Julian Anciaux, owner, 2025

In 1793, sans-culottes, radical revolutionaries, seized Thy-le-Château to loot and destroy it, starting with the keep, the symbol of power, which was already in very poor shape. The stones went into houses, as often happened at the time. At the foot of the spiral staircase, stones darker than elsewhere suggest that fire swept up the stairwell.

In the 20th century, a wealthy industrialist, Louis Piret, had the château of Thy rebuilt with the architect Puissant. The upper part of the round stair tower was rebuilt, and so was the keep. The keep was poorly designed. Its floors, loaded with gravel and schist paving, sagged, water seeped in through a rotten beam at the top, and the mortar joints and stone corbels suffered. About 21 meters (69 feet) high, the keep has 98 steps up to its platform, which looks out over the whole village. On the ground floor, the fireback room holds about twenty cast-iron firebacks, the oldest from the 16th century.

Masonry anchor holes all around the courtyard, known as putlog holes, were meant to carry hoardings, overhanging wooden galleries. They were never installed. At Thy, Louis Piret's work was left partly unfinished.

The gatehouse of Thy-le-Château protects the entrance to the upper courtyard. Its upper room houses the portcullis, the first barrier against attackers, which was lowered at the slightest danger, since peacetime was rare. Its mechanism takes three men, two to raise it and one to remove the wedges, and it has not been used in more than thirty years. Murder holes set into the thick walls were used to drop stones or burning-hot sand on the enemy. The sand worked its way into armor, and it was cheaper than boiling oil.

The lower courtyard at Thy was the heart of the village, a town square. In the 17th century, ramparts replaced the old wooden palisades. It was a fortified place to live, with a forge, a baker and the everyday trades, where the villagers could take shelter.

On May 14, 1940, a bomb exploded in the center of Thy-le-Château, southwest of the church. It destroyed a large part of the village and the church, as well as houses built in what is now the lower courtyard. With no church, the villagers turned to the château. For about twelve years, until 1952, services were held in the guardroom on the ground floor of the residence. A pew from that time is still there.

The guardroom at Thy is divided into levels. The lower part was the kitchen, with its fireplace. Another section, on two levels, held a storeroom with the guards' dormitories above it, as the stone corbels and stepped arrow slits show. A stone arch, now blocked, let carts through to the storeroom. The stage that takes up part of the room was built in the 20th century for village use.

Bought around 2023 by Julian Anciaux, Thy-le-Château has been under restoration ever since. The keep, the most critical point, came first. Working from a lift with his father, the owner recut the corner stones that had been found and set them back in place, to close the edge of the tower and stop the leaks. A contractor then installed oak beams, and the floors were rebuilt exactly as before. In the lord's bedroom, the new floor warped almost right away, and it had to be taken up and the insulation removed.

"Unfortunately it's not all rosy, and the work is moving forward. But sometimes you hit setbacks and you have to redo what's already been done, which takes even more time. But you have to keep going."
Julian Anciaux, owner, 2026

On the residence at Thy, 800 natural slates were replaced, fastened with copper hooks as they used to be, and the flashing was redone in zinc to stop the leaks at both gables. While clearing a half-buried cellar cluttered with old fuel-oil tanks, the team uncovered typical 12th-century masonry and wall cupboards, under a vaulted brick ceiling from the industrial era. In 2026, the owner reckons the work is halfway done. Still to be redone are the oak moldings of the Lords' Hall ceiling and its window frames with roundel glazing, the small circular panes typical of the 15th century.

Thy-le-Château lives off its events: each year, a Bavarian-style festival in October on the lawn of the lower courtyard, and a Christmas market of about a month in the main courtyard. In 2026, a bar is being installed in the guardroom so the château can open more often, and the Lords' Hall is set to become a reception venue for private parties and businesses. A beer bearing the château's image recalls the breweries it housed in the 20th century.

Two themed guest lodgings are planned for 2026. The one in the watchtower, a rectangular tower on four levels, is moving along: the ground floor is almost finished, all in oak, with a bedroom on the top floor that has four windows over the village and access to the curtain wall. There, the owner would like to install hoardings, with the town's approval, to recreate a wall walk. The second, in the portcullis room, is waiting its turn.

"The goal is for the château to be self-sufficient in the future, whether that's for me while I own it or maybe later if someone else takes it over."
Julian Anciaux, owner, 2026