Marchainville Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

At Marchainville, a former commune now merged into Longny les Villages, in the Perche Ornais, the ruins of a medieval castle of the Counts of Perche still survive. The national heritage listing attributes its construction to Geoffrey IV, Count of Perche, at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereas other accounts mention a promise made in 1212 by Count Thomas of Perche to surrender the stronghold to Philip Augustus. During the Hundred Years' War, the fortress was taken in 1364 by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, then besieged and recaptured on behalf of the King of France. It was finally dismantled by the English in the fifteenth century. Today, four ruined towers, the bases of other towers and sections of curtain wall remain; a corner tower and a stretch of curtain wall are incorporated into the caretaker's house, and the line of the moats can still be traced to the west and north. These remains, partially listed as monuments historiques on 28 December 1978, are located on private property.