Château de Marfontaine

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Marfontaine stands in the commune of Marfontaine, in the Aisne department, on a site whose history goes back to the Middle Ages: in the 11th century the seigneury belonged to the Bishop of Laon, then passed in turn to the Marfontaine and Venderesse families and, from 1433, to the Fay d'Athies family for some one hundred and forty years. The present building was constructed between 1617 and 1619 for Marguerite de Vaudier de Beaumont, widow of Jacques Raoult de Fay d'Athies, who had remarried François de Proisy, grand seneschal of Vermandois. Rectangular in plan, the château combines a residential building (logis) with farm buildings; its two-level elevation is built of brick with stone window surrounds, and its façades bear fired-brick decoration forming escutcheons and geometric patterns. A fortified enclosure, reinforced with buttresses and flanked by round turrets with pyramidal roofs, protects the whole. Having passed by marriage to the Hallencourt and then the Noailles families at the end of the 18th century, the château now belongs to private owners; the residence, the farm buildings and the remains of the enclosure were listed as historic monuments (inscrits au titre des monuments historiques) by order of 13 October 1998. The building, visible from the road, is today in a poor state of conservation.