Domaine de la Nèle stands at the northern edge of Walloon Brabant, on ten hectares where the Kleine Gete and the Zeype meet. The estate's origins reach back to the nineteenth century, when it belonged to the noble Lowet de Wotrange family. Around 1920, under the Oury family — owners of the historic Hoegaarden sugar refinery — the country house took the form you see today: a façade of warm brick and pale render under a steep slate roof, doubled in the still water of its own pond. The Lowet de Wotranges held the estate until the mid-1970s.
Inside there are 18 bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom — fourteen in the main house, four more above the wellness barn — sleeping up to 40 guests. The heart of the house is the oak-panelled banquet hall, long enough to seat everyone at a single table beneath its chandeliers, with garden on three sides. There is a large salon with an authentic open fireplace, a fully equipped kitchen, and enough sitting rooms that forty people can be together or apart. A nine-metre heated indoor pool occupies what were once the garages; a sauna is on its way.
Outside, two rivers cross the grounds and meet on them. Centuries-old trees, long lawns, walking paths and quiet places at the water's edge. Across the Kleine Gete lies a walled garden of 1.6 hectares, enclosed by a brick wall almost four metres high that has stood for more than two centuries; one of its two original glasshouses survives and is being restored around its own wooden frame. There is an orangerie where the family once overwintered their citrus collection, along with the old horse stables, the concierge's house, and the water house.
