Motte of Le Plessis-Lastelle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Motte du Plessis, at Le Plessis-Lastelle in the Manche department, is the principal surviving remnant of a fortified castle on Rue du Donjon, south of the village centre, near the Mouloir stream, which overlooked the surrounding marshes. The stronghold belonged to Baron Grimoult, who was implicated in 1046 in a plot against William the Bastard; defeated at the Val-ès-Dunes in 1047, he died in prison. In 1195, Philip Augustus granted the site to Richard de Vernon, and the Coigny family later inherited it. The motte, 15 to 20 metres high with a summit diameter of about 35 metres, bears the remains of a circular masonry keep roughly 11.50 metres in diameter, attributed to the Plantagenet period. A double enclosure partly survived to the west in the nineteenth century but has since disappeared. A cross, a calvary and a Way of the Cross were laid out there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. No protection under the historic monuments designation has been identified, and the conditions of public access are not documented.