Acoz Castle, Heritage castle in Gerpinnes, Belgium

Acoz Castle is a limestone structure in Gerpinnes, Wallonia, with two preserved wings extending to the east and south along with a northwest tower. The building sits within protective moat systems fed by the Biesme River and occupies a substantial property spanning multiple hectares.

The seigneurie of Acoz was a fragment of the old Carolingian domain of Gerpinnes and belonged to the Count of Namur. The Marotte family acquired it in 1543 and probably began the castle between the late 15th and early 17th century. It passed to the de Quiévrain in 1727, to Jacques d'Udekem by inheritance in 1759, and was sold to the Pirmez family in 1860.

The castle is also called Château Pirmez after the family that bought it in 1860 and restored it. Its east wing holds a chapel dedicated to Saint Rolende, a patron saint of Gerpinnes, built in 1744 in Liège Regency style with Namur wood panelling and a stained-glass window placed by the Pirmez family after 1860.

Access to the grounds is from the southwest, over an 18th-century three-arch stone bridge across the Hanzinne stream, leading to a 17th-century gate with a bell-shaped spire and a lodge on its south side. The castle stands opposite a walled French garden with 19th-century pavilions, entered between eclectic stone columns. The moat is fed by the Biesme, also called Hanzinne here.

In 1876 Octave Pirmez found a Roman coin hoard of 150 pieces in an olla in the castle wood, bearing the effigies of Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, Hadrian, Antoninus, Faustina and Sabina. A year earlier, in 1865, he had excavated a Merovingian cemetery of 25 graves at Monplaisir, with lance heads, Frankish scramasaxes and bronze objects.