Schloß Crange, Herne

Haus Crange was a former moated castle in the present-day district of Crange in Herne.

Duke Adolf II of Cleves had the moated castle, which had corner towers and could only be reached by a wooden drawbridge, built around 1440 on an island in the lowland of the Emscher and probably on St. Laurence's Day in 1441 he enfeoffed Derick van Eykel, Drost of the Märkisches Amt Bochum, with the house "geheiten ten Krangh". Krang meant river bend.

North of the castle stood the chapel of the House of Crange, the Laurentius Chapel, which was consecrated in 1449. It was already demolished in 1873. Its three-winged altar from the Soest School of Painting is now in Ahausen Castle.

After the von Eickel family of Crange, the von Rump family inherited the property in 1637. In 1761 the building burned down and in the same year it was renewed with a classicistic interior design on the Gothic cellar vault. In 1812 the owners moved out and the castle was leased. By succession the property came to the Counts of Landsberg-Velen. In 1884 it was sold to the Harpener Bergwerksgesellschaft, which sold it to the Kanalbaugesellschaft in 1905. Via Essener Steinkohle AG, the house passed to the industrialist Robert Heitkamp in 1962.

The building deteriorated visibly, and in 1991 the Förderverein Haus Crange e. V. was founded to save the building. Despite various plans and makeshift measures, the house had fallen into disrepair by the turn of the millennium.

After ten years of restoration work, the remains of the house were reopened to the public as a "well-kept ruin" in September 2012. Around the building, of which only the foundation walls remain, there is a newly created circular path with information boards that provide information about the history of the site.

A few meters from the ruins, the Cranger Kirmes takes place, which dates back to the horse market on St. Laurence's Day, where wild horses from the Emscherbruch were sold since the 16th century.