Schloss Schieferegg

Schloss Schieferegg stands in the small village of the same name in the Kronstorf district of Upper Austria. It is a modest two-storey building with a hipped roof, set back from the road behind a partly filled moat. The entrance is a plain round-headed door framed in granite. Above it a half-relief of the Virgin holding Christ and a stone tablet record past owners and later repairs. The castle’s history begins in 1361 when Berthold Scheffolt, a citizen of Enns, sold thirty feudal holdings attached to the site. Over the next centuries it passed through the hands of knightly families such as the Feuchters, the Polheims and the Tillys. In 1466 Steyr’s citizens briefly seized it to capture a local knight who had taken refuge there. In 1485 Hungarian troops burned the building during their war against Emperor Frederick III, yet it was rebuilt soon after and still matches the 1674 engraving by Georg Matthäus Vischer. Today the castle remains in private hands and is not open to the public. A low wooden veranda has been added to the west side. Inside the surrounding moat only the former bridge approach has been filled; elsewhere the water still encircles the walls. Nearby farm buildings include a press house dated 1688 and a stable adorned with a fresco of the Holy Trinity. A high wall of river stones encloses a large garden behind the house.