To be privately owned
CastleSpital am Pyhrn
Pyhrn Castle
The Klause am Pyhrn (also called Pflegerturm) is located in the municipality of Spital am Pyhrn in the district of Kirchdorf an der Krems in Upper Austria (below the Pyhrn Pass road B 138, Pyhrn 29).
The first mention of the tower was in 1265 in the urbarium of the Styrian provincial princes. Provincial officials (Pfleger) administered the office, which is why no Meierhof (manor farm) was established here and the seat did not become a fief. Around 1418, the tower came into the possession of the Spital am Pyhrn monastery. In 1455, the monastery was commissioned to build a pass fortification (Klause) here. For this purpose, the tower was rebuilt accordingly. Keyhole embrasures and slit embrasures for firearms were installed and the upper floor was extended; presumably, this previously had a platform with a merlon or machicolation crown. Thus, the tower was converted into a battery tower that could dominate the pass road.
In 1825, the tower came to Upper Austria due to the relocation of the provincial borders. Since its military significance had been lost and it now served residential purposes, it was redesigned accordingly.
Pflegerturm today+
The rectangular building is three-story and covered with a hip roof. The masonry consists of rubble stones in horizontal layers. Some of the old windows are still preserved; these clearly stand out from the line of the newly broken-out windows and are also clearly recognizable by the old stone lintels. The wooden extensions and the wooden cladding are of more recent date. On the west side, a corbel protrudes below the central window on the first floor, indicating that a residential oriel once existed here. The latrine is likely to have been on the north side, indicated by a break in the masonry from which a previously existing corbel has been removed.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spital_am_Pyhrn_Pflegerturm.JPG
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 47.6294, 14.3227