Qualla: Katholm Castle

Katholm Castle: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sebastian Nils, CC BY-SA 3.0. The road gets you first. Hulvejen, the sunken lane running in to Katholm, was cut for carts and has been worn deeper by centuries of traffic, and it arrives at the manor between two walls of earth topped with enormous beeches. Buses have got stuck in it. Lorries have got stuck in it. Then the lane opens and there is a red-brick Renaissance house standing on an artificial island in the middle of its own lake, six kilometres south of Grenaa on the Djursland peninsula, three wings around a courtyard that has not changed shape since the 1620s.

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Image: Sebastian Nils | CC BY-SA 3.0

Katholm Castle: Fasti's Two Wings

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Image: J. Christiansen, Public domain. There was a farm at Katholm from the fifteenth century. In 1545 Christen Fasti raised it to the status of a manor, and his son Thomas Fasti built the house that still stands - the east wing completed in 1588, the north wing in 1591. Thomas died in 1600. His widow Christence Brysk...

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Image: Image: J. Christiansen | Public domain

Katholm Castle: The Admiral's Courtyard

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Szilas, CC0. The buyer was Albret Skeel, and 1616 was his year: he was appointed Admiral of the Realm and admitted to the Rigsråd, the Privy Council, in the same twelve months. He finished what the Fastis had started. A low west wing went up in 1622, closing the courtyard on its third side, a...

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Image: Szilas | CC0

Katholm Castle: Soldiers, Widows and Bankruptcy

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Lewison, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of the next two centuries Katholm passed through hands rather than families. The Skeels held it for generations until 1681, when Albret Skeel's granddaughter married Jens Maltesen Sehested; she died in 1684 and he bought out her mother and her brother-in-law to keep the ...

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Image: Martin Lewison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Katholm Castle: The Auction of 1839

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sommer, CC BY-SA 3.0. In December 1839 the State put Katholm up at public auction, and First Lieutenant Adolph Wilhelm Dinesen bought it. He became a councillor and a member of parliament, and he had eight children. One of them, born in 1845, grew up on this island in its lake: Wilhelm Dinesen, who fo...

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Image: Sommer | CC BY-SA 3.0

Katholm Castle: Four Generations of Collets

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ajepbah, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. In 1916 Holger Collet bought Katholm from a Dinesen daughter, and the family has held it ever since. Collet built a new stable, then a tenant residence and another stable with a garage - the routine expansion of a working estate. In 1935 fire tore through the farm buildings and d...

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Image: Ajepbah | CC BY-SA 3.0 de