Villebois Castle

 

Villebois Castle is located in Charente in the French commune of Villebois-Lavalette. The fortified hill of Villebois is dominated by the ruins of a feudal castle and a wing of an imposing 17th century building. It belonged to Jean-Louis Nogaret de La Valette, Duke of Épernon and Governor of Angoumois.

Historical

The spur position of the castle platform on a hillock, near the boundary between Angoumois and Périgord, dominating Chemin Boisné, an ancient road between Saintes and Périgueux, meant that the site was very early on an important stronghold for the defense of the surroundings.

In the 8th century, the Fulchers of Villebois were its lords. Then in 959, it was the Helies. In 1120 the castle was taken by Vulgrin II Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, and in 1143 it passed to the Ithiers de Villebois, who built the two-storey Romanesque chapel.

The line died out in 1204 with Amélie de Cognac, married to a Philippe de Cognac, illegitimate son of Richard  I. The Villebois estates then passed to Jean-Sans-Terre, then to Jean-Sans-Terre's wife, Isabelle d'Angoulême. His remarriage transferred the seigneuries of the Cognacs and the castle to the Lusignans, counts of Angoulême, who raised their seven semi-circular flanking towers and enlarged the chapel.

In 1355, Raymond de Mareuil, knight, lord of Mareuil and Bourzac, received from King Jean le Bon the lordship of Villebois after the extinction of the Lusignan line. The lords of Mareuil are then among the successive owners of the castle.

During the Hundred Years War, the English held a garrison there. In 1360, during the Treaty of Brétigny retroceding Angoumois to English Guyenne, the English entrusted the custody of the castle to its owner, Raymond de Mareuil. In 1376, Villebois was taken back from the English by the Duke of Berry, brother of Charles V.

Guy de Mareuil, baron de Mareuil and de Villebois, seigneur of Bourzac, Angeac, Vibrac, Montmoreau and Pranzac, was seneschal of Angoumois. Died in 1519, he is buried in the chapel of the convent of the Augustins which he had founded in Villebois.

In 1541, the château returned with the incredible marriage of his daughter, Gabrielle de Mareuil, to Nicolas d'Anjou, Marquis de Mézières en Berry. In 1556, Renée d'Anjou-Mézières married the very Catholic François de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, and brought him as a dowry her lands of Vibrac, Villebois and Mareuil.

During the Wars of Religion Villebois will be largely destroyed. Indeed, between 1568 and 1569, the castle was taken and taken over by Catholics and Protestants. In 1590, Jean-Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duke of Épernon and governor of Angoumois from 1588, laid siege to the castle where members of the League, headed by a certain Maumont, appointed by the "knight d' Aubeterre”, David Bouchard, had entrenched themselves. He broke through the wall with intense cannon fire, and hanged eighteen leaguers.

A few years later, in 1596, the Duke of Épernon acquired from its owner, the Marquise de Mézières, the land of Villebois as a fief and had it set up, in 1622 by letters patent, the marquisate as a duchy and peerage of Lavalette, d 'where the current name of Villebois-Lavalette. The castle became the Duke's main secondary residence, after Angoulême.

The young Louis XIII stayed there with his new wife Anne of Austria and her mother Marie de Médicis, invited by the Duke of Épernon. The royal convoy arrived on December 28th, 1615 by the path of the crests and driving rain.

In 1660, Bernard de Nogaret , Duke of La Valette, heir son of Jean-Louis de Nogaret, having himself no longer an heir and abandoning the land of Villebois-Lavalette, sold it with his title, as well as his lands of Vibrac and Angeac, to Philippe de Montaut-Bénac, Marquis de Navailles. The peerage of the Duchy of Lavedan, extinguished on the death of his father for lack of registration, was recreated on La Valette under the name of Navailles.

In 1665 the Duke of Navailles and La Valette, removed from court by Louis XIV, retired to his lands. He razed the old fortress and built the castle of which only the west wing remains. The Duke died in 1684, and his wife continued the embellishment work. In particular, she built a gallery-bridge linking the two wings, which was unfinished and destroyed a few years later. The castle then passed to their daughter Marquise de Pompadour, then to the latter's daughter, Marquise de Dangeau, and to the latter's daughter, the Princess of Soubise. But from the beginning of the 18th century, the castle was in the hands of the creditors of the family. His condition deteriorated before and after theRevolution. During the Revolution, the coat of arms and parchments were destroyed.

During the Convention, the castle became a food store and a prison for suspects. In 1816, it became a gendarmerie barracks, until December 10th, 1822 where a fire destroyed the east wing and the dome of the 17th century buildings.

The castle was sold several times, in 1838 it was Abbé Michon who bought it to build a school for boys, whose buildings, which occupied the northern esplanade, have now disappeared, a school which lasted for five years. Following unpaid bills, the castle passed to the municipality which installed a religious school for young girls there, then a school for boys until 1912.

In 1914, it was bought by Doctor Maurice de Fleury, grandfather of actor Bernard Lavalette , who carried out major work there to make the west wing habitable and to restore the ramparts. The Fleury family owned the château until 1998.

In 1980, at the instigation of Frédéric Didier, an architecture student, and with the help of the owners of the château, Philippe and Bernard de Fleury, the Friends of the Château de Villebois-Lavalette association was created. The habitable part of the 17th century  then saw part of its terrace collapse. A dynamic is then set in motion between the State, the Region, the Department, the Fine Arts, the owners, the municipality, and a first phase of work leads to the repair of the 17th century terrace. Holiday camps set up by historical monuments with the help of the Rempart associationbegin to restore the passageways and the ramparts. These are generally students from all the countries of Europe in two internships of fifteen days. the wall has regained its 13th century appearance  with the battlements of the west facade and the roofs of two towers.

The current owner, Norbert Fradin, acquired the castle in the year 2000. He not only continued the restoration work on the building but also encouraged archaeological excavation campaigns that brought to light valuable information about the history of the fortress and its architecture, all under the watchful eye of the regional department of cultural affairs and the successive intervention of two chief architects of historical monuments: Philippe Villeneuve and Denis Dodeman. Between 2001 and 2007 the excavations directed by Adrien Montigny in connection with the regional service of archeology concerned the castral core making it possible to locate the vestiges of the motte castrale, to identify the elevations of the chapel, but also to highlight different phases of work and transformations of the surrounding walls.

December 16th, 2005, the castle, with the chapel, the enclosure and the lower room, is classified as a historic monument.

Description

The site consists of an elongated plateau 150 meters long by 50 meters wide, forming the northern end of an elongated mound, which could evoke in miniature the site of Angoulême. This spur, entirely surrounded by a rampart, consists of two parts. The northern part, the largest, is currently covered with a short lawn. The rampart is flanked on the outside by seven semicircular towers, two of which are very close to the north, suggesting an entry into the Middle Ages, which was later condemned. This polygonal enclosure would be the oldest part of the castle still in place. It is part of the current of the fortifications of the Plantagenêt domains at the end of the 12thth  century. The wall was reinforced by the addition of flanking towers around 1226-1230. At the same time, Geoffroi de Lusignan builta fairly similar fortress in Vouvant in the Vendée.

Of the Gallo-Roman villa and the primitive castel which had perhaps preceded the medieval castle, no trace has yet been found.

The southern part of the spur, corresponding on the surface to about a third of the whole, is where the current castle is built with a large terrace to the west, both dating from the 17th century, as well as the chapel 12th century  to the east which also overlooks the northern part. These two parts are separated by two recently restored side-by-side porches, one of which passes under the chapel wing. The castle, very rebuilt in the 15th century  presented until modern times a tall silhouette framed by round towers with pointed roofs. Of these works carried out by the Mareuil family, only the south-east tower, known as “de la Geôle”, remains well preserved. A large building, serving as a stable and attic, leaning on the south curtain wall, was completely demolished in 1830.

A monumental staircase connects the northern esplanade, known as the "barnyard", to the former main courtyard of the castle, higher up and at the same level as the terrace.

It is in the southern rampart that is currently the only entrance, fortified, and formerly protected by a ditch barring the spur and a drawbridge. This entrance gate was refortified in the 17th century  after the entry in force of the Duke of Épernon and reveals the grooves of the double drawbridge. It has two arches corresponding to the carriage entrance and the pedestrian door. This entrance overlooks the small farmyard, with the caretaker's accommodation on the right concealing the old walkway, and the castle on the left. A quadrangular tower with a spiral staircase, called the Vigie tower or the Dwarf tower, dating from the15th century, forms the southeast corner of the rampart.

The Duke of Epernon's assault caused significant damage on the southern flank. Once he became the owner, he undertook only minimal repairs, the establishment of a few bastions and the elevation of the present two-arched gateway. The duke concentrates his architectural efforts on other residences, his objectives in Villebois are only defensive.

The Duke of Navailles in 1665 profoundly transformed the fortress founded in the 11th century  and altered many times over the centuries; it retains the enclosure dating from the Lusignans but significantly redesigns the castle. The materials of the old castle served as backfill, thus filling in its lower rooms. From 1667, he erected a large modern U-shaped castle, the corners and the central body punctuated by pavilions. It is known by a description of 1750, and some old photographs. Carried out by local master masons, the influence of Le Vau is quite noticeable.

After the fire of 1822 which destroyed the right wing (east) and the central pavilion, only the left wing (west) of this castle remained, inhabited by the owner. The main courtyard separates the two wings. It also has an ornamental portal from the 17th century, which was an access door to the central building called the "pavilion du Dôme", because it was surmounted by an imposing dome. Forward, the addition of a service building in symmetry with the medieval attic creates an imposing common courtyard, in the tradition of the hierarchy of spaces that surround classical castles. The duke still extends the grip of the enclosure on the adjacent hill, where a large garden unfolds.

The Romanesque chapel has been restored. The primitive low chapel is barrel-vaulted with transverse ribs resting on four Romanesque capitals. It communicates with the porch connecting the two courtyards by a door. The upper part, rebuilt in the 17th century, has retained only its two gutter walls. The chapel was formerly connected to the Château de Navailles by a two-storey building, extending the one above the porch which could be remains of an earlier chapel. In the Middle Ages, it had no exit with the interior of the castle, but communicated with the farmyard for the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela or Saint Eutrope de Saintes passing through who found refuge there. It is one of the rare chapels of this type in the region. In modern times, the upper chapel retains its purpose, but the lower chapel serves as a cellar and a dwelling.

Remains of the old fortress of the 11th century  were also discovered under the current castle. Under the main courtyard, the base of a dungeon with unusual dimensions in the region was discovered, 34 meters by 12 meters. This keep has circular buttresses at each corner, and formed on the ground floor a vaulted room pierced with lancets with strong interior splays.

The terrace of the house shelters another vaulted room, improperly called "guard room". Parallel to the previous lower room and leaning on the base of the dungeon, it overlooks the lower courtyard to the north. It is in fact a relatively recent development carried out by the Abbé Michon, consisting in connecting the lower rooms of the two wings of the castle by a vaulted room pierced with windows, in order to establish a refectory there for the school that he had built in the backyard of the castle.

In the center of the entrance courtyard, between the chapel and the guard house, an old fortified gate was discovered in the 2000s. One can see the intact paving of the intramural access path, going up towards the chapel.

At No.12  rue d'Épernon, south of the castle, was the main entrance between the 17th and 19th centuries  surmounted by a gate built by the Navailles, which also gave access to the park to the south. In the 20th century, the rue de Navailles was pierced giving direct access to the current entrance with the 17th century gatehouse. 

Notes and references

Ratings

The location of this coat of arms is visible on an old postcard of the portal from 1860 (Histoire de Villebois et de son château, 1982). The current coat of arms was sculpted in the 20th century by the de Fleurys. It so happens that the double-headed eagle is also the coat of arms of the de Fleury, branch of Blanzac-Beauregard, before the Revolution (ref. JM.Ouvrard).

The Ithiers (or Itiers) were divided into two branches, that of Cognac and that of Villebois.

The barony of Mareuil was one of four in Périgord, along with Beynac, Biron and Bourdeilles.

David Bouchard, Chevalier, born in Geneva, was Lord and Viscount of Aubeterre and Baron of Pauléon. He abjured Protestantism and even became the leader of the League in Angoumois. He was killed at the siege of Lisle in 1593. His only daughter Hippolyte married François d'Esparbès de Lussan, giving this family the seigneury of Aubeterre.

The Duchy of La Valette will also give its name to the communes of Salles-Lavalette, Vaux-Lavalette, Magnac-Lavalette. After the Revolution, the parish will become the commune Lavalette, thus called until 1861 when it will take its current name.

Louis  XIII and Anne of Austria were returning from Bordeaux where their wedding festivities had taken place a month earlier, on November 28th, 1615. Their previous stop was the Château d'Aubeterre du 24At December 28th, and the following that of La Rochefoucauld the January 1st _, passing through Marthon. The Chemin des Crêtes was the local name for the one-kilometre path passing over the narrow plateau from Fontignoux via the current cemetery and arriving at the drawbridge to the south of the enclosure. It was fitted out for the occasion and called Chemin Louis XIII.

His wife, Suzanne de Baudéan de Paradère, in charge of the supervision of the bridesmaids, wanted to oppose the gallant undertakings of King Louis  XIV, who was offended, and dismissed the couple in 1664.

We find this same style of double chapel with independent entrance of the castle also in Marthon, with the chapel-gate Saint-Jean-l'Évangéliste.