Huis Beaucarne Grape Glasshouse (Druivenserre)

Huis Beaucarne is a manor house in Ename, now part of Oudenaarde. According to the Flemish heritage inventory, Jacques Beaucarne (1711-1780) bought it in 1748 and had it rebuilt at considerable cost in 1751; the family owned and lived in it until 1945, and several of its members served as mayor of Ename. The grape glasshouse stands at the end of the garden, its back wall on the Abdijsteeg.

The same inventory says it was founded in the 1770s as an orangery or winter garden, then transformed and raised into a grape house, in the middle or third quarter of the 19th century, a second date given with a question mark. The vines are said to date from the foundation, between 1770 and 1775, an age the text calls very rare. The house's website calls the building the oldest preserved grape glasshouse in Belgium.

The glasshouse has been a protected monument since 1976 (facades, interior, glasshouse), its roof since 1995. Closed for almost six years, with rotten floors, leaks and broken stairs according to a resident quoted by VRT, it underwent the largest restoration in the estate's history, for nearly a million euros. The King Baudouin Foundation (Louise Vanden Bulcke Fund) supported the project with 10,000 euros. In July 2026 VRT reported that the estate was open to the public again.

The inventory describes a tall rectangular brick building. On the south side a low-pitched glazed lean-to roof rests on a front wall raised with glazing. The garden facade, now plastered and whitewashed, was originally painted with alternating vertical red and blue bands, a motif borrowed from Turkish tents and typical of European exoticism in the second half of the 18th century; a fragment left visible on the left preserves the trace. The symmetrical front opens through a tall door in a projecting flat-roofed corner bay, and a broad round-arched window is flanked by niches under oculi. The round-arched openings carry iron tracery in a neo-Gothic tint. The almost blank north wall has windows only at the upper level.

The interior is designed for ventilation and insulation: a cellar under the rear part, where the floor is higher, painted sliding shutters on the side and rear windows, and a ground floor resting on slender wooden posts with tall masonry plinths. Against the north wall a partition with galleries opens on three registers of arches, reached by wooden ladder-stairs; upstairs, a wooden frame guides the vine shoots.

The vines belong to the Frankenthal table variety, an old German grape, and the inventory describes them as Vitis vinifera. Two are planted outside against the facade, their shoots led under glass at about one metre; three more grow inside. Trained as fans, in the manner described in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, they cover the walls and the glazed roof, and the bunches ripen only at about ten metres, at the top of the three-storey house. The inventory measures one trunk at 63 cm in circumference, 85 cm above the ground, and its neighbour at 55 cm.

According to VRT the vines survived the 19th-century phylloxera plague. Their very sweet grapes have been used for several years in attempts to make a demi-sec wine or a light sparkling one. In the park, the inventory also records a rockery crossed by a brook from the moat of Ename Abbey, a swamp cypress, pleached lime trees and a wooden garden pavilion on cast-iron columns.

The glasshouse is seen on a guided visit of the garden and glasshouse, which adds about three quarters of an hour to the house tour, itself guided only; tours run in Dutch, French and English, with departures for individuals on Sundays and groups by reservation. The official site (undated page) described the glasshouse as only partly accessible during works due to finish in summer 2026, whereas VRT reported a reopening in July 2026: it is wise to confirm before travelling.

A tea room occupies the former orchid house, open at weekends from May to October with free entry. The house stands in the centre of Ename, protected as a village townscape since 1995, so the visit can be extended with a walk through the village.