Heritage groups protest at royals’ plans to demolish farms

Cultural heritage groups, including one which has queen Beatrix as its patron, have made formal protests about royal family plans to demolish two farms on their property in Wassenaar.

The family has applied to have the farms, part of the country estate where crown prince Willem-Alexander lives, torn down and replaced by three luxury houses, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.
Each family house would have about 850 square metres of living space and be worth between €5 and €7m, the paper says.
Wrong signal
‘Demolishing this sort of cultural heritage sends out the wrong signal,’ Karel Loeff, director of the Heemschut foundation told the paper. ‘Then more country properties will be replaced by houses. And that will ruin the countryside from a cultural and historical perspective.
The farmhouses were built after World War II to compensate for buildings destroyed in the bombing.
The royal family made the application to demolish the buildings at the beginning of this year, even though Wassenaar council is on the point of placing them on the listed building register. The council has not yet decided whether to give the family the green light.
A spokesman for the state information service, which acts as the royal family’s press spokesman, said the De Horsten estate runs at a loss and needs its finances improving. ‘The owner does not wish to make a profit,’ the spokesman said.