Château de Lugny: Seat of the Barony of Lugny in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Château de Lugny is a medieval château in France, standing west of the village of Lugny at the foot of the Château hill. It was the seat of the lords of Lugny and the center of the barony of Lugny, a feudal lordship whose justice was still administered there in 1789. The medieval complex included a fortified residence, a chapel, a keep, towers, terraces, and water-filled ditches.
The Lords of Lugny
The estate remained with the House of Lugny until the senior male line ended with Jean III de Lugny in the mid-sixteenth century. Jean III was lord of Lugny, count of Brancion, and baron of several other territories. His daughter Françoise, heiress of the estate, married François Chabot in 1558, transferring the lordship to the House of Chabot.
Ownership passed again through marriage in 1579, when Catherine Chabot, the daughter and heiress of Françoise de Lugny and François Chabot, married Jean de Saulx, Viscount of Tavannes. Their son Charles de Saulx was styled Marquis of Lugny and served as bailiff of the Mâconnais, an official responsible for royal administration and justice in the area, from 1626 until his death in 1629.
In 1647, Charles de Saulx’s daughter and heiress, Claire-Françoise de Saulx, married Charles-François de La Baume, Count of Montrevel. The House of La Baume then retained the estate until the end of the Ancien Régime, the monarchical system of privileged social orders that governed France before the Revolution. Their son Jacques-Marie de La Baume became Baron of Lugny in the late seventeenth century, followed by his son Melchior-Esprit de La Baume in the early eighteenth century.
Melchior-Esprit held the titles Marquis of Saint-Martin, thirteenth Count of Montrevel, and Baron of Lugny. He was buried in the castle chapel in 1740, the last lord of Lugny to receive burial there. His son Florent-Alexandre-Melchior de La Baume, born in 1736, became the fourteenth and last Count of Montrevel and the final lord of Lugny. He was executed in Paris in 1794 during the French Revolution.
Destruction during the Revolution
By the eighteenth century, the château had become a hunting lodge of the Counts of Montrevel. During the night of 27–28 July 1789, at the beginning of the Great Fear, a wave of rural unrest in which peasants and townspeople attacked seigneurial properties, rebellious peasants and artisans attacked and burned the estate.
The fire destroyed the seigneurial residence, the castle chapel, and the keep. The buildings around the lower courtyard survived, including the entrance towers and adjoining structures. After Florent-Alexandre-Melchior de La Baume was wrongly suspected of having emigrated, his property, including the château and its dependencies, was placed under sequestration. The ruins were later used by local inhabitants as a source of building materials.
Industrial, Religious, and Educational Uses
After the Revolution, the surviving buildings lost their agricultural function. During the first half of the nineteenth century they housed a cotton-spinning mill, followed by a factory producing colored mosaic tiles. The tile factory employed about thirty workers in 1838. The complex later accommodated the gendarmerie, France’s military-status national police force, after Lugny became a canton capital in 1790.
From about 1910, part of the château served as the presbytery, the residence of clergy serving the parish, and it remained in that use until the mid-1980s. Dr Paul Jacques owned part of the château during the interwar period. In 1943, during the Second World War, the German army established a small garrison at Lugny to contain the local maquis, a rural armed Resistance group. Its command occupied the château, while troops were quartered in the village festival hall and bicycle patrols operated in surrounding villages.
In 1946, Abbé Joseph Robert bought the château and converted the surviving complex into a private school with boarding facilities. Robert had served as Lugny’s parish priest and archpriest since 1935 and had founded a pastoral community, a Christian community organized around shared religious and parish activities. The association Les Foyers communautaires, founded in December 1946, now owns almost all of the surviving buildings and has its headquarters there. The complex continues to accommodate the private La Source school group, including its collège, or lower-secondary school, and the Maison des Foyers communautaires.
Renovation work at the end of 2020 repaired the long façade facing Monsignor Joseph Robert Park, restored one of the fourteenth-century round towers, cleared several blocked cannon openings, and later repaired the north façade. Since 2021, the privately owned château has participated in the European Heritage Days, and an explanatory panel produced by Les Foyers communautaires and Lugny Patrimoine was installed beside one of the entrance towers in 2022.
Remains
The surviving complex forms only a small part of the medieval château. Its principal remains are two round entrance towers, traditionally dated to the fourteenth century, and sections of the former lower-courtyard buildings arranged as a quadrilateral. The medieval château was surrounded by water-filled ditches supplied by the Bourbonne spring, also called the Blue Waters spring, which rises at the foot of the Château hill.
Lower Courtyard and Entrance
Entrance Towers
The two entrance towers each have three storeys and are attached to narrow adjoining buildings. These buildings stand perpendicular to one another and carry high hipped roofs, which slope down on all sides, covered with flat tiles. The building attached to the northeast tower contains a circular turret set into the angle between the building and the tower. A dormer window rises through the roof hip above the turret.
The towers once flanked a gateway and drawbridge, a bridge that could be raised to control passage across the defensive ditch. Both have disappeared, but several cannon openings remain at different levels. Several of these openings were uncovered and cleared during the renovation work of 2020.
Gatehouse and Former Stables
Within the former entrance, three partly blocked arched openings on the left recall the château’s former gatehouse or concierge’s lodge. On the right are two elegant bays with moulded semicircular arches. The entrance to the former stables, traditionally dated to the sixteenth century, passes through a basket-handle arch, a low flattened arch with a curve resembling a basket handle.
Seigneurial Residence and Chapel
Former Residence
The seigneurial residence stood on level ground between the present church and the Château hill. It contained a large hall, numerous chambers, a vaulted treasury room, and a chapel. The treasury held terrier books, registers recording landholding obligations, rents, dues, and related seigneurial rights. The residence was destroyed in the fire of 1789.
Only the base of a circular tower and a small section of the former curtain wall survive from this part of the château. The wall extends for several tens of metres. The ground surface has repeatedly collapsed, exposing buried masonry and possible underground rooms. A collapse in 2018 revealed part of a vaulted room measuring approximately four metres long by three metres wide. Its basket-handle vault consists of roughly squared limestone blocks laid irregularly with open joints, while most of the room has collapsed.
Castle Chapel
The former castle chapel and oratory stood beside the château in the south transept of the old Romanesque parish church. That church was demolished in 1823 and replaced by the present church. The chapel was already recorded in 1493, was served by two chaplains, and was used for the burial of the lords and ladies of Lugny.
Dedicated to Saint Nicholas, Saint Claude, Saint George, and Saint Catherine, the chapel was destroyed along with the main residence during the 1789 fire. Melchior-Esprit de La Baume was buried there in 1740, marking the last recorded seigneurial burial in the chapel.
Medieval Keep
The medieval keep was a very high square tower topped by a weathervane and containing a clock. As with the main residence and castle chapel, the keep was destroyed in 1789. The present buildings nevertheless preserve evidence of the complex’s changing uses, from lower courtyard and gatehouse to stables, industrial spaces, gendarmerie, presbytery, and school buildings.
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