Château de Villers-sur-Semois

En un regard

Le château en bref

In Villers-sur-Semois, a village in the municipality of Étalle in Belgian Lorraine, the former château-farm stands on Rue Joseph Weicker, about two hundred metres from the church of Saint-Martin. It was the residence of Henri Henriquez (sometimes spelled Henriquet), an ironmaster active at Mellier and Rulles, who received high justice over Villers, Mortinsart and Orsinfaing in 1709. The wall anchors on the main façade bear the date 1712, the year he was also authorised to divert the Semois to drain the surrounding land. The main building is laid out as a quadrangle, flanked by an octagonal tower some ten metres high, and included a seigneurial chapel. Henriquez lived there until his death in 1730. The manorial archives held in Arlon preserve traces of repairs entrusted to a slater in 1781-1783. In the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural outbuildings were added on the west side; farmers from the village worked them until the 2000s. A restoration was reported as under way in 2018; the current state of the works is not documented by any official source.