Chiffretot Manor: A Sixteenth-Century House in France
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page4 sections
History
Chiffretot Manor is a sixteenth-century manor house south of Les Moutiers-Hubert in France. Its octagonal turret was added in the seventeenth century.
The manor and its dovecote received protected historic-monument status, a French heritage designation, on 19 January 1927. In 1944, during the Allied landings in France and the Battle of Normandy, the campaign that followed them, German field marshal Erwin Rommel requisitioned the manor. Robert Halley, founder of the French retail group Promodès, later owned it and served as mayor of the village from 1978 to 2001.
Remains
The manor stands beside the Touques in the Pays d’Auge, about 500 metres southwest of Saint-Martin Church. Its grounds include the main house and a separate dovecote in the surrounding park.
Main house and turret
The main building is rectangular, with two storeys and a hipped roof. Two large chimneys rise at the gable ends. Its façades combine timber framing and tiled infill; modest decorative details appear on the main façade, including along the storey-level wall plate and around the door lintel. At the southeast corner, an octagonal turret added in the seventeenth century rises from an ochre limestone base. Its timber-framed sides each contain a narrow opening that once served as a defensive firing slit.
Dovecote
A square dovecote built of ashlar stone stands in the park. It bears the date 1605.
