Borg Nienoord
The present Nienoord is a modest mansion in a large park. This house was built in 1886 on the foundations of an older building. This was the house of the Van Ewsum family, who owned it in the first half of the sixteenth century. Around 1700 the house was property of count and countess Von Inn und Knyphausen. They built the rare shell grotto. After a fire in 1850 the Van Panhuys family commissioned the construction of the present estate in Art Nouveau and neoclassical style. Nowadays the Nienoord contains the National Carriage Museum and a restaurant.
Nowadays Nienoord is a beautiful house in neoclassical style.
The surroundings of Nienoord are haunted by two soldiers, father and son, who call for their army, but in vain.
Knight Wigbold van Ewsum took service in the Spanish army, but this rejected him by the people of Groningen. So he quit and brought together on own expenses an army of 4000 men, this time to fight against the Spaniards.
During a fight he was deadly wounded, and his son managed to take him away from the battlefield, and even back to the castle. There they died in each other's arms, because the son was severely wounded too.
Nowadays they still walk the grounds of the castle and call for their soldiers.
The monumental gate still remembers of days gone.