An ancient Belgian farm

Mono Monday #56 , theme Ancient buildings, thanks very much to  JoanneInOz for hosting and setting the themes.

Had to take son no 2 to the train station at Zaventem airport and decided to take the long way back off the ring road around Brussels and into the countryside, remembering this imposing old farm at Vossem.
The farm is called the Hoeve Oude Voorde, it's a traditional Belgian square homestead with a white facade more than 50 m long, already mentioned in documents from 1129.
 In the 18th century the farm was purchased by the university of Leuven (the Luxembourg College) and it was then turned into its present form.
The college also had the adjacent tower building (which has a reddish pink colour, see here for a colour version captured the first time I saw the farm) constructed as boarding accommodation for its students. A noteworthy fact is that in the middle of that tower building there is a fireplace with an oven underneath, which besides as a baking oven served as an early form of central heating. The whole complex is huge, see the car for size !
The farm is currently privately owned and is not open to the public, a pity as I would love to have a look inside. As you can see the weather is still quite variable.

Thanks very much for your comments and stars for yesterday's settee in the woods, I really have no idea what it was doing there. And the nearest university in Leuven is rather too far away for student pranks.