Mottes castrales de la Tour-Saint-Austrille: A Medieval Fortified Site in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page8 sections
History
The Mottes castrales de la Tour-Saint-Austrille are a medieval fortified site in Saint-Dizier-la-Tour, France, comprising artificial or modified earthen mounds known as castle mottes. The complex is mentioned in two charters from the Cartulary of Saint-Étienne of Limoges dated 957–958. These documents identify Droctricus as the holder of an alleu, meaning land held as free property rather than as feudal tenure, called La Tour.
Early religious associations
The principal platform may have supported a church founded in the tenth century together with a burial ground. These features may later have been associated with a collegiate institution, a religious community served by a college of clergy. From 1095, the site may have become a priory dependent on the Benedictine Abbey of Déols. These interpretations remain uncertain, but they place the complex within a changing religious landscape during the medieval period.
La Tour-Saint-Austrille belonged to the commune of Saint-Dizier until the two were merged in 1848. The site’s later history is also reflected in a 1520 terrier, a land survey recording property boundaries, holdings, and related rights. That register mentions a fourth motte and the pond that remains visible south of the complex.
Investigation and protection
M. de Cessac excavated the mottes in 1865. The site was cleared and enhanced in 2012, bringing its surviving earthworks and associated remains into clearer view. The parcels containing the mottes and their ancient and medieval remains were listed as historic monuments by an order dated 4 February 2020.
Remains
The complex covers approximately 4 hectares and contains three documented castle mottes, two of which are particularly well preserved. The principal motte stands to the south and dominates the group. Two smaller adjoining mottes lie to the north, 4.50 metres apart and separated by the Goze watercourse. A shared ditch and embankment enclose the northern pair, while a large raised central platform, probably a bailey or enclosed lower area associated with the mottes, occupies the middle of the site.
Mottes and central platform
Southern and northern mottes
The southern mound forms the principal earthwork of the complex. The two northern mottes are smaller and stand within a common defensive arrangement of ditch and embankment. West of the central platform are the remains of a third, larger motte, which is also enclosed by a ditch. The 1520 terrier’s reference to a fourth motte adds an earlier record of another earthwork to the surviving arrangement. The pond mentioned in the same register is still visible south of the complex.
Central platform and associated buildings
The central raised platform probably served as the bailey. A cadastral record from 1810 places a Saint-Austrille chapel there. The complex lies near a pond, the priory mill, and Saint Michael’s Church of La Tour-Saint-Austrille, linking the earthworks with the religious and working landscape around the village.
Excavated chambers and fire traces
Excavation revealed a rectangular chamber or pit at the centre of each mound. One measured 11.5 by 5 metres. The chambers contained ash, fire-reddened rock, vitrified granite, and melted iron objects. Vitrification is the partial melting and glass-like fusing of stone through intense heat.
The deep chambers have been interpreted in two principal ways. They may have been underground spaces containing a cremation vault, or they may represent the foundations of wooden towers destroyed by fire during the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Another interpretation proposes that intense heat was used to strengthen the cores of the mottes, through a process comparable to vitrification associated with some Bronze Age or Iron Age fortifications. The surviving earthworks and excavated fire traces therefore support more than one reading of how the mottes were constructed and used.
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