Burg Efferen

Burg Efferen stands on the eastern edge of the former Duffesbach stream in Hürth, a town just outside Cologne. Once a water fortress, it drew its moat from the stream, now piped underground. The site sits where a Roman water conduit once ran from the Eifel hills to Cologne, and fragments of its stone piers still lie buried along the old course. A main road laid in Roman times still passes nearby, linking the area to the ancient route between Cologne and Trier. Around the castle once clustered seven farmsteads larger than the main estate, and the village grew up around the stream and this small triangle. The castle’s origins are lost, but records show the convent of St Maria im Kapitol in Cologne held the land in the late seventh century. By the late fourteenth century the powerful Overstolzen family of Cologne fortified the site as a bulwark against the archbishop’s ambitions. A drawing by the Walloon artist Renier Roidkin in the early eighteenth century shows several towers still standing. Over the centuries the property passed through the hands of mayors, patricians, free nobles and counts, each leaving their mark on the estate. In 1769 the Freiherr von Bourscheidt rebuilt the castle in the Baroque style, and the name of the master builder, Christian Birkenhus, appears on a stone by the old bridge. Today the castle shows its Baroque face after wartime damage and restorations. A small lawn marks the former moat, now filled in, while an avenue of lime trees leads to the arched gateway. The medieval gate tower rises above the entrance, its pointed arches still carrying the grooves for the drawbridge chains. Inside, a spiral stair of Drachenfels trachyte winds up to the upper floors, where windows framed in the same stone catch the light. The two-storey manor house faces the street with seven evenly spaced windows and a central gable bearing the Bourscheidt arms. A balcony below carries the Fürstenberg crest among gilt rococo scrolls, and the initials of the first non-noble owner, Matthias Koch, were added later. Low farm buildings enclose the cobbled courtyard, still worked by the present owners’ family.