Haus Steinfunder

Under the name "Gut op den Steinvondern" – formerly "Loefsittart", covering around 100 Morgen of land – the estate first appears around 1360, then owned by Wilhelm von Hüls. It lay on the Schlecke, a brook that marked the border between the Electoral-Cologne districts of Oedt and Kempen. On 10 January 1389 Lewe von Hüls placed his "huyss genant Funderen" in fief to the Archbishop of Cologne, Friedrich III of Saarwerden, granting him the right of access – though it is not entirely certain this refers to the same house.

In the second half of the 16th century the seat belonged to Theoderich van der Part and Anna van Neerhave. Their grandsons Gebhard and Dederich divided the property; Gebhard sold his share in 1672 to Christian Hoff, an Electoral-Cologne steward and bailiff of Kempen and Oedt, who acquired the second half two years later. In 1682 the estate was raised to a true noble seat, admitted to the register of nobility with the tax exemption that entailed.

In 1729 Johanna Catharina, widow of the mayor Johann Bertram Hoff, sold the estate to Johann Hermann Josef Sybenius, bailiff of Neuss. In 1802 it passed to the couple Johann Joseph Horten and Sybilla Catharina Hüttmann. In the 1990s the Düsseldorf art dealer Karl-Ernst Becker rescued the by-then dilapidated complex, had it restored, and laid out a small symmetrical baroque garden southwest of the moat. Since 2005 the owner has been Doris Zehr.

Inside, each floor holds a large hall. The upper hall once displayed four 18th-century paintings of the four continents then known – Africa, Asia, America and Europe; they now hang in the council chamber of Oedt. The 1802 sale produced a map of the "Steinforther Hof", and the Tranchot map of the same year shows that the bailey then still had its own, long-vanished moat, and that a second island surrounded by ditches once lay south of the main house. Today the manor is a private residence and the bailey is farmed; the site occasionally serves as a location for film and photo shoots.