Hof te Dieren

It was a favourite retreat of the princes of Orange and king-stadtholder William III at the south-eastern border of the Veluwe.

In 1218, Adolf VI, count of Berg (1176-1218), donated his house and surrounding estate in Dieren to the Teutonic Order.

[2] To have sufficient animals to hunt for, the Prince transferred around 300 deer from its estate of Huis Honselaarsdijk to Dieren.

[4] In the first part of his reign as stadtholder, he spent as much as ten weeks a year hunting in the Veluwe.

[4][5] When William married Mary Stuart (1662-1694) in 1677, the modest-sized house in Dieren with a number of outbuildings was no longer deemed suitable for the newly-weds.

[4] In its vicinity, he constructed a new summer palace called Het Loo by the design of the architects Jacob Roman and Johan van Swieten.

[4] This became the main hunting seat in the Veluwe with Dieren as its satellite or get-away when the Loo was too crowded, like the Trianon palaces to Versailles .

[5][7] William and Mary also stayed at the houses their entourage had at the Veluwe, like Middachten Castle of Godert de Ginkel, 1st Earl of Athlone, huis De Voorst of Arnold van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, or the castle in Rozendaal.

[4] After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William and Mary became king of queen of England, Ireland, and Scotland in 1689.

This triggered a second rebuilding campaign of the Hof te Dieren to make it suitable for royalty.

Between 1757 and 1763, she created a forest to the north side of Dieren with hills named after her children, Prince William V and Princess Carolina.

When French soldiers were billeting at the house, the hunting lodge burned down completely and its furnishings were lost.

Marie Cornélie countes of Wassenaer Obdam (1799-1850), owner of Twickel Castle, acquired the Hof te Dieren estate in 1821.

[8] The house was at the centre of an English landscape park designed by Jan David Zocher and Eduard Petzold .