Schloss Bredebeck ("Bredebeck House") was built in 1901/1902 by a farmer, Herr Hellberg. It is actually a manor house in terms of its size and function. The house is located in woodland in the German state of Lower Saxony between the former villages of Hörsten and Hohne, which disappeared in the 1930s in the wake of the establishment of Bergen-Hohne Training Area. In 1936, the Bredebeck estate was incorporated into the training area and, since then, has not been accessible to the general public. It became part of the British Army's estate at Bergen-Hohne Garrison.

In old documents from 1476 and 1511 the place is referred to as tom Bredtbeck and in 1589 as Bretbeck. There was a stream, the Liethbach, a tributary of the Meiße, that used to exist in the vicinity of the former farm and which led to a large forest called the Breede. Hence the name Bredebeck ("Breede Beck"). In the 1476 document it is recorded that the v. Bothmer brothers (Ernst, Gebhard and Kurt) sold the farm of tom Bredbeck to Heinrich, Otto und Lambert von Dageförde. Later, between 1563 and 1700, farmers with the names Bredbeck, Bredebeck and Bretbeck lived on the farm.

In 1877, the farmer, Gustav Hellberg, abandoned the traditional heath farming typical of the area. He sold his moorland sheep, the Heidschnucken, because neither their wool nor their meat fetched good prices. He switched to sheep fattening, introduced artificial fertilizer, laid out strawberry and asparagus fields and grew fruit trees. He even tried amelioration by digging ditches and sanding the surface of the boggy terrain (so-called Moordammkultur), but with little success.

On 23 November 1909 the farm and manor building were sold for 160,000 Reichsmarks to an Army officer, Major (retired) von Rosen. In 1922, he sold the house in turn to a lawyer, Adolf Kühling. In 1932 the property was transferred to Ernst Kühling. In 1936 the manor was incorporated into the terrain of the then Bergen Military Training Area. Since 1945 it has been an officers' mess belonging to the resident British cavalry regiment. Currently this unit is the armoured reconnaissance regiment, the 9th/12th Royal Lancers (Prince of Wales's). Occasionally the British use the mess as a guest house. It has even been used as such by the British Royal Family as accommodation when members of the royal household visit the British Army in Germany. In December 2011 Prince Andrew was invited here. In his capacity as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Regiment, he paid tribute to the soldiers of the Royal Lancers after they had returned in November following a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan. The house was returned to the German government when the British garrison closed in summer 2015.

Schloss Bredebeck

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Celle Castle (German: Schloss Celle) or, less commonly, Celle Palace, in the German town of Celle in Lower Saxony was one of the residences of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg. This quadrangular building is the largest castle in the southern Lüneburg Heath region.

Celle Castle is based on a fortified wall tower (Wehrturm) with the character of a water castle, that guarded a ford over the River Aller. This first fortification, called Kellu, was built by a Brunonen count around 980 AD. Another forerunner of the castle, which may have been an extension of the wall tower, was founded in 1292 by Otto the Strict. The cellar vault and the lower stories of the watch tower have survived to the present day. Its ruins lie underneath the castle theatre. Around 1315 the actual Castrum Celle was first recorded. As a consequence of the War of the Lüneburg Succession, in 1378 the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg moved their Residenz from Lüneburg to Celle and began transforming the Burg, now encircled by ditches and embankments, into a Schloss. About a century later the castle was further expanded by Frederick the Pious from 1471–1478, and the castle chapel was consecrated in 1485. Ernest I the Confessor had the castle decorated from 1530 in the renaissance style. At the same time, between 1520 and 1560, the defences, in the form of ramparts and bastions, were pushed further out. At this time the castle was typical of its era, a quadrangular building with a rectangular courtyard, with massive corner towers, a large main tower and characteristic features of Weser Renaissance.

From 1670 onwards alterations to the castle were carried out by Duke George William, which were intended to transform the old renaissance seat into a contemporary Residenz. George William was keen on building, typical of the princes of his time, and made further changes that were intended to recall his time in Italy. The façades, that were copied from Venetian buildings, were then given their present-day appearance. Notable features include the corona of gables that encircles the roofs, and the unusual shape of the domed towers. The addition of the castle theatre and the baroque state rooms stem from this period.

On the death of George William in 1705 the absolute rule of the dukes ended. The Principality of Lüneburg subsequently passed, along with the Principality of Calenberg, to the Kingdom of Hanover. The castle lost its political significance and stood empty again for a long time. From 1772 it was occupied by the British-born, Danish queen, Caroline Matilda, the daughter of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, who had been banished to Celle as a result of her affair with Johann Friedrich Struensee of Copenhagen. The unhappy queen only lived at the Celle court until 1775 when she died at a relatively young age of scarlet fever. In the 19th century the castle was occasionally used by the Hanoverian royal household as a summer residence. As a result, Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves had several interior alterations made in 1839 and 1840. During the World War I, it was used as a detention camp for officers (Offizerslager or Oflag) by the German Army.

The castle still has a variety of rooms and halls that date back over different periods. The court chapel was converted after the Reformation and has been preserved almost unchanged with its renaissance architecture. The baroque-style state rooms were created under George William and have also been preserved. In the Gothic Hall there are constantly changing exhibitions and in the East Wing is a section of Celle's Bomann Museum, which is dedicated to the history of the Kingdom of Hanover. The historic castle rooms and the castle chapel, restored between 1978 and 1981, may be visited as part of a guided tour.

The court theatre of the castle, the Schlosstheater Celle, is one of the oldest preserved theatres of its kind and one of the few baroque theatres in North Germany. It still has its own theatre company today.

The present Schlosstheater was built on the instigation of Duke George William, who before he came to power spent some time in Venice and came to know Italian opera whilst he was there. Construction work on the theatre began in 1670 and was largely finished by 1675. The duke hosted a succession of theatre companies, that he recruited, for example, from France, Italy and also nearby Hanover. On the death of the duke the theatre became orphaned until the short-lived stay of Caroline Matilda, for whom the theatre was given a second gallery. The theatre was conceived for the benefit of the court and was never intended to be open to the public, who were first allowed a moderate degree of access to plays at the end of the 18th century. The theatre was regularly used until the late 19th century, but was closed in 1890 and fell into disuse. In 1935 it underwent a thorough renovation.

Because the castle was never used for any military purposes, between 1785-1802 the outer bastions were dismantled and used as fill for the once deep, wide castle moats. In 1826 gardens were laid out in the vicinity of the castle by levelling and removing the defensive embankments. In their place, trees and shrubs were planted and lawns laid. In the 19th century a landscape garden was created in the area immediately surrounding the castle. Since part of the park was given away for building residential accommodation around 1900, the park has retained an area of about 7 hectares (17 acres). The castle still sits on an island today that is surrounded by moats.

Outside the former defensive belt, but not far from the castle, George William had the French Garden ("Französischer Garten"), a baroque park designed on French lines, laid out in the late 17th century. This was later converted to an English landscape garden, but the former baroque layout can still be made out in certain areas of the park.

Celle Castle

Ahlden House (German: Schloss Ahlden) is a stately home at Ahlden on the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was built in 1549 as a water castle on the river Aller, which has since changed its course. Nowadays the three-winged mansion is a private residence and is used as an arts auction house.

It is principally known as the place of imprisonment of Sophia Dorothea of Celle, otherwise Sophie Dorothea of Brunswick-Lüneburg, wife of George I of Great Britain and the mother of George II of Great Britain.

Opposite the mansion, in a depression on the other bank of the river, was the old castle of Bunkenburg which lies today in ruins. It is believed to have been built in the 13th century. It was established opposite the village of Ahlden on the banks of the Aller. In 1618, during a flood, the Aller shifted its channel towards the east and, as the result of an embankment downstream, the waters of the Leine then flowed past Ahlden in the bed of the former Aller. Since 1648 the course of the "Old Leine" has become a partly dried oxbow lake. The present house was built in the 16th century on the river bank by Ahlden opposite the Bunkenburg. Today it is located on the old branch of the Aller, which was the one that channeled the waters of the Leine in 1618 and has since been called the "Old Leine".

Much of the house is of timber-framed construction; only the ground floor of the west wing being built of brick. The building today consists of three, two-storey wings in the shape of a horseshoe, which were built in 1549. In earlier centuries the site was, for a time, almost entirely enclosed and had an interior courtyard. The individual wings of the building were not only used for residential rooms, but as for stables and coach houses (Remisen).

The west wing is the main building of the mansion, which Duke Christian the Elder of Brunswick-Lüneburg had built by his seneschal (Drost), Johann Behr, in 1613. On the entranceway leading to the inner courtyard the wall recesses for the drawbridge can still be seen. During the construction of the wing in 1613 there was a serious accident when a roof joist dislodged and seriously injured 14 workers.

The south wing, a timber-framed structure with brick infill, is the oldest part of the building. It was completed in 1579 under Duke William the Younger of Brunswick-Lüneburg, as an inscription on one of the beams records. The inner courtyard side of the wing has a lavishly-decorated Renaissance facade.

The north wing is a timber-framed structure that was redesigned in 1705 by the architect, Johann Caspar Borchmann, because the building was falling into disrepair. Outside the house there was a gatehouse and entranceway. It guarded access to the house and was demolished probably around 1800. The building is clearly recognisable on the Merian engraving of 1654 as a detached building.

Originally the castle was surrounded by a double moat and a rampart. The rampart was levelled in 1690 in order to create a French pleasure garden. The moats were filled in during the 19th century.

The castle's predecessor, Bunkenburg, appeared on the opposite bank of the Aller, a detail also mentioned by Merian. The occupants of this castle were the House of Ahlden, first mentioned in the 13th century, who were knights (Ritter) and Burgmanns. The fortification was first mentioned in the records in 1433, and had previously belonged to the Diocese of Minden. In 1431 there was a change of seat from Ahlden and its castle. The lords of Ahlden lost everything in the conflict with the diocese and the House of Welf. They had broken their bond not to pursue any more feuds or carry out any more raids. As a result Ahlden ended up in the possession of the Duke of Lüneburg. Between 1443 and 1575 the seat of Ahlden was mortgaged to the von Mandelsloh family. Not until the 16th century was the present castle built, whilst Bunkenburg fell into ruin.

The princely office (Amt) of Ahlden was established in 1431. It took over the management and exercised jurisdiction over the area. The castle also belonged to the Amt. The office was headed by an Amtmann, who collected taxes from the citizens and farmed the land on the state-owned farm, the estate of the castle. From 1784 the castle underwent major alterations to adapt it to administrative purposes and it also housed the prison. After about 450 years in existence, the Amt of Ahlden was disbanded in 1884 and its function was transferred to the district of Fallingbostel. The castle then housed the district court (Amtsgericht) until 1972. Justice had been dispensed in Ahlden since 1310.

In the Thirty Years War the castle was occupied by the imperial troops under Tilly after a day's siege. They defended it against an unsuccessful attack by 800 besieging Danish troops. From 1726 Ahlden House was the residence of the state seneschals.

The considerable renovation work required was completed in 1975 at a cost of 90,000 DM from state funds. An antiques auctions house bought the castle for its representational headquarters, on the condition that the castle courtyard would be kept open for the public during the day. Limited viewing of the interior is only possible when previewing items for auctions.

When she was divorced from her husband in 1694 after her affair with Lieutenant Königsmarck, Sophie Dorothea of Brunswick-Lüneburg was brought to Ahlden House, where she was imprisoned until her death in 1726.