Augustinerinnenkloster Küstelberg

The Augustinerinnenkloster Küstelberg was a small medieval convent in the Sauerland hills, founded in 1177 and moved to Glindfeld in 1299. It stood on a gentle rise above the village of Küstelberg, a few kilometres south-west of Medebach. The nuns followed the Augustinian rule and lived under the oversight of a provost whose name appears in records from 1170 onwards. Its importance lay in the network of rights and lands it controlled across the region. Count Ludwig of Arnsberg gave the nuns the chapel and vogt rights at Glindfeld in 1284. The neighbouring monastery at Grafschaft transferred its main farm there in 1294 so that the Küstelberg sisters could elect their provost from Grafschaft’s monks. Archbishop Wigbold of Cologne ordered the move to Glindfeld in 1297, and Provost Gottfried von Padberg led the community there two years later. Today only grassy mounds mark the cloister’s footprint. Excavations show the church was a three-aisled hall, pulled down in stages after 1299 and finally cleared in 1741. A new parish church rose on the site, while the old convent buildings crumbled to ruins by 1802. The place is quiet, with wide views over rolling farmland and forests, and the only reminder is the name of the field where the foundations once stood.