Schloss Benkhausen

Schloss Benkhausen stands west of Espelkamp’s district of Gestringen and north of the Mittelland Canal in Minden-Lübbecke. The five-hectare estate includes a water castle with a historic park once laid out in geometric avenues. Old trees remain, among them a copper beech, a Dutch lime and an American walnut in the north-eastern section. The house was built between 1657 and 1683 and stayed largely unchanged. After 1945 it served as British headquarters, then as a naval command post until 1955. In 1962 the Wittekindshof foundation ran it as a home for people with disabilities until 2009. The Gauselmann family bought it in 2010 and turned it into a training centre with hotel rooms. The German Coin-Operated Museum now occupies a barn in the outer bailey. Visitors find the restored manor with exposed 17th-century fireplaces and stucco. A glass link building houses reception, seminar rooms and breakfast space. The hotel complex and the park, including a large pavilion and the von Münch family burial site, are open to the public. A two-kilometre circular walk leads through woodland, meadows and a wet alder forest, crossing the restored Flöthe stream twice before reaching the Mittelland Canal and its landing stage.