Burgstall Kernegg

Burgstall Kernegg stands on the Kohlbühel ridge north-west of the Kernecker farms in the Hirschbach district of Upper Austria. It was a small medieval hilltop stronghold built on cleared land in the mid-13th century. The Gusner family, a lower-nobility clan based in the northern Riedmark and southern Bohemia, made it their main seat by the 14th century. Peter Ybein Gusner even took the name ‘von Cherneckh’. By the late 14th or early 15th century the castle was destroyed or abandoned during border feuds and the Hussite wars. The last recorded Gusner, Wolfgang, appears around 1440. After the ruin, the lands passed to nearby lords and the estate farm was split into Upper and Lower Kernegger holdings. Both eventually came under the Waldenfels lordship. A 1786 land record still mentions a field called ‘Burgstall in der Holzstatt’ and a ‘Gusenacker’, showing how long the memory of the site lingered. Today the earthworks measure about forty by twenty metres. On the west side the remains of a square tower-like building rise up to a metre above ground. Its walls, one metre thick, are built of rough stones and lime mortar and span seven by eight metres. Excavations in 1989 and 1990 uncovered 13th- and 14th-century pottery but the site was soon reburied. The tower foundations now lie under grass and brambles, unprotected and largely forgotten.