Monday, 11 August - Part 1
Sturefors Castle (near Linköping)
From Linköping we drove south-east to Västervik on the east coast (see map at the bottom of the page); but we also made a couple of stops on the way down there.
Not far from Linköping, and just a minor detour from the main road, there is an old castle that I wanted to visit: Sturefors. The castle itself is private and not open to the public, but part of the surrounding park (with a view of the castle) is. And the reason that I wanted to see it is that back in the 1920s, my paternal grandmother's older half-sister Gerda (born 1881) worked there for a while, as lady's maid to a Countess Bielke. The castle is still owned by the same family, Bielke (an ancient noble family).
Back in 2022, I wrote a post about this in my family history blog Greetings from the Past. Sturefors seems have been Gerda's last place of employment before she became lady's maid to Estelle Bernadotte (born Manville; an American young woman from Pleasantville, New York) who married the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte in 1928. I have since got it confirmed from a reliable source that Gerda was kind of "headhunted" for the latter position in the autumn of 1928, before their wedding (which took place in Pleasantville). (Folke was related to the Swedish royal family; became a well-known diplomat towards the end of WWII and after; and was sadly assasinated in Jerusalem 1948. But Gerda remained with Estelle for the rest of her life; and lived to be nearly 92.)
In the 1920s, Gerda sent this postcard of Sturefors castle to her step-mother Selma (my paternal great-grandmother):
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| (original postdard, yellowed with age) |
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| (edited back to b&w by me) |
... and I was curious to see for myself how it compares to 2022!
Alas my impression was that the present-day family is probably struggling to keep the estate going at all - or at least keeping the park with the huge mirror pond free from weeds does not seem to have been their first priority of late... The maintenance of the park also seems to have deteriorated quite a bit even since the photos in the Wikipedia articles were taken! So it takes quite a bit of imagination now to try to envisage what it all looked like when my great-aunt was living and working there, a hundred years ago. (I'm still glad we took the trouble to find it, though.)
Even this "cultural heritage" sign looks rather old and tired by now...
Linking to Sepia Saturday 789
What a fascinating connection between your family history and Sturefors, even if the estate has lost some of its former splendour
ReplyDeleteRo, because of an inherited collection of postcards, I have managed to "track" quite a lot of my great-aunt's life as a travelling lady's maid :)
DeleteLovely photos and postcard.
ReplyDeleteThanks Linda
DeleteIt does have a somewhat neglected air about it, but the buildings still look well maintained - of course not knowing what it's like inside! The little temple is my favourite, and I like the "Dark Path" mention on the map - it sounds like something out of Harry Potter, doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteThe "German Kitchen" makes me wonder about a possible family connection with Germany; Bielke sounds like a perfectly regular German surname to me, originating from the Berlin area.
Meike, I don't know what the "German kitchen" refers to (I didn't really notice that until I enlarged my photo of the sign for this post). The Bielke family is noble Swedish family with a history that can be traced back to 1283, although they did not start using Bielke as a family name until in the1500s. The name in Swedish means "beam" or "baulk" (AE balk) and is said to refer to two golden "beams" on their coat of arms. They're not related to Danish or Norwegian families bearing the same surname; and no German connection is mentioned in the articles I've looked at.
DeleteSuch an interesting post. The castle and grounds do look rather sad now. Hiring help is expensive and may be difficult to source. No wonder so many residences are opened to the public to garner some income.
ReplyDeleteJanice, I can't help thinking that it must seem a rather sad view to the family themselves now, looking out at the overgrown pond from of the windows on that side of the building... (Also wondering what one family does with all those rooms, nowadays!)
DeleteI can't even imagine how much it would cost to keep a place the size of that house and all the surrounding grounds in this new world we live in.. interesting info on your family history, and I would have wanted to do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteSandra, I dare not guess at the costs either! ... I'd be curious to have a look inside as well, but I knew beforehand that that would not be possible. (Who knows, maybe they're all empty rooms now except for a few!!)
DeleteWow, that's quite a place! It must have been a real showpiece when Gerda was there. Did she feel lucky to be working in such a place? I suppose it would depend on how she was treated, but she has always, through your stories of her life, seemed to be one of those people who gets along well with others. A shame the place has become a 'bit' rundown, but priorities and costs of upkeep have changed a lot since days past.
ReplyDeleteGail, I only have postcards written by Gerda and on those she never expresses emotion, opinion, "gossip" or even names of her employers. (That I know the names of some of them is thanks to a relative who had some of her letters of reference from various employments.) I get the impression she took pride in her work and was loyal to her employers and therefore also appreciated. She undoubtedly seems to have kept "working her way up", until ending up with the Bernadottes from 1928 onward (when she was 47 herself, with lots of experience of travelling and living in different countries).
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