Vignory Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

In Vignory, some twenty kilometres north of Chaumont, the remains of the castle overlook the village and its famous Romanesque church of Saint-Étienne. The lordship emerged at the beginning of the 11th century with Gui I, founder of the castle and the church; the castle is first mentioned in writing in 1050–1052 under Roger I. The keep, known as the tour Quarrée, was built in the 12th century, and Gauthier I encircled the town with walls in 1204. Damaged by two sieges at the end of the 14th century, the castle was restored from 1416 by Jean de Vergy, who built the tour au Puits and a seigneurial residence. Around 1495, Jean de Baudricourt added a powerful gun tower twenty metres in diameter, with walls seven metres thick, at the corner of the lower bailey. What survives are the keep, the tour au Puits, the southern curtain walls and this gun tower. The first three have been listed as monuments historiques since 1989, the gun tower since 2022. Owned by the commune, the site was consolidated between 2009 and 2015, and a local association runs it.