Château de l’abbaye de Cysoing: A Château in a Former Abbey Enclosure
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page10 sections
History
Château de l’abbaye de Cysoing is a château in France, built around 1800 within part of the former enclosure of Saint-Calixte Abbey at Cysoing. The monastery had been founded in the ninth century by Saint Evrad, a Christian religious figure, before it was destroyed during the French Revolution. The later château took its name from this earlier abbey and was planned as part of a landscaped estate shaped by the surviving enclosure and its water features.
The Abbey Enclosure and Its Transformation
Around 1700, two large fishponds were excavated inside the abbey grounds. Together they established a long central view toward a pavilion west of the present château. Two small islands were formed at the ends of the ponds, and each island contained two chapels. These works gave the enclosure an ordered landscape that later influenced the position of the château.
The French Revolution divided the former abbey enclosure into 60 lots. Philippe-Joseph Riquet, a lawyer from Lille, acquired two-thirds of the property, including the fishponds and a garden containing the Pyramide de Fontenoy. While the enclosure was being sold as national property, Riquet commissioned a château around 1800. He aligned it with the two ponds and the Belvedere pavilion to the west, using materials recovered from the former abbey. Some of that masonry was incorporated into a tunnel beneath an artificial earth embankment close to the building.
Nineteenth-Century Ownership and Landscape Design
Riquet later became bankrupt and sold the property to Charles-Lucien Lipsin-Caccant on 20 September 1816. Lipsin-Caccant sold it three years later, on 15 June 1819, to Augustin-Hubert-Joseph Charvet. Between 1824 and 1886, winding paths, ponds, dense shrubbery, and embankments were arranged to create a Romantic park. The grounds were known as “The Labyrinth” until the middle of the twentieth century. Charvet may have carried out the design, although his responsibility remains uncertain.
In 1838, Charvet sold the château, park, and pyramid in several lots. The division caused local concern that the Pyramide de Fontenoy might be moved. The Nord General Council later acquired the relevant parcel, and the pyramid was included on the list of historic monuments in 1840. The monument commemorates King Louis XV’s stay at Cysoing Abbey in 1744. Louis XV was king of France from 1715 to 1774.
Restoration and Modernization
Architect Charles Marteau restored the pyramid in 1888 and replaced its missing dolphin ornaments. At that time, the château still preserved the appearance of a reduced eighteenth-century pavilion inspired by the Petit Trianon, an eighteenth-century palace in the grounds of Versailles.
In October 1907, the owner Noblet commissioned Léonce Hainez, the architect of Lille’s Sébastopol Theatre, to modernize the château. The work followed disagreements about delays and communication and substantially changed the earlier pavilion. Part of the building was demolished to create greater symmetry, while other areas were modified and reorganized. The modernization added central heating, running water with wastewater drainage, and a dumbwaiter. Hainez also proposed footbridges over channels connecting or extending the fishponds, but Noblet rejected that project.
Several owners followed one another during the twentieth century. The Ernoult family held the property from 1919 to 1943 and commissioned further work from Jean-Baptiste Maillard in 1925. The château has been listed as a historic monument since 9 October 2008, a French protected heritage designation for buildings or sites valued for their architectural or historical importance. Its English owners later agreed to transfer the property to the Établissement public foncier for the benefit of the municipality of Cysoing.
Remains
The Château
Built around 1800 against the former abbey wall, the château combines an external design modeled on the Petit Trianon with an interior arrangement associated with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pavilion or folly tradition. A folly is a small ornamental building intended as a picturesque retreat or landscape feature rather than as a principal residence. The building has three levels. The basement is directly accessible from the north, while the ground floor opens toward the west, facing the ponds. Materials from the abbey remain incorporated into its construction.
The principal façade is organized around a slightly projecting central avant-corps, a section that extends beyond the main wall. Four large columns with Ionic capitals rise across the façade, and the bay on either side is topped by a curving gabled feature known as a curvilinear pediment. The château’s present external appearance results largely from Hainez’s 1907 modernization, which altered the earlier pavilion while retaining its relationship to the grounds.
The Park and Water Landscape
Fishponds and Channels
The château stands in a park of approximately 2.5 hectares, also described as the château park or abbey garden. The two large fishponds form its principal central perspective. A channel joins them at their eastern end, while another carries the northern pond eastward. The water system preserves the fundamental landscape arrangement established within the former abbey enclosure around 1700.
Island and Abbey Masonry
The grounds contain an island with a former chapel, together with grottoes or tunnels built with stonework from the former abbey. A further tunnel runs beneath an artificial earth embankment near the château and also incorporates material taken from the monastic buildings. The park includes the wall enclosing the former abbey grounds, an eighteenth-century entrance grille, and numerous trees of notable species.
Pyramide de Fontenoy
The garden and parcel associated with the Pyramide de Fontenoy form part of the château grounds. The monument is an obelisk erected in honor of Louis XV to commemorate his stay at Cysoing Abbey in 1744. Its dolphin ornaments were reinstated during Charles Marteau’s restoration in 1888.
