Château de Pontarmé: A Renaissance Hunting Residence in France
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History
Château de Pontarmé is a castle in France, probably built in the first quarter of the sixteenth century in a Renaissance style on the remains of an earlier castle. Located at Pontarmé beside the forests north of the town, it became associated with the Chantilly hunting domain and later underwent a long period of agricultural use before being restored as a residence.
The medieval lordship
The first references to the lordship of Pontarmé date from the twelfth century, when it belonged to the Bouteillers de Senlis, a powerful aristocratic family that held several lordships around Senlis. The bishop of Senlis was their suzerain, the superior lord to whom they owed allegiance and obligations. The foundation of the first castle has been attributed to the Bouteillers in the thirteenth century, although that attribution remains uncertain.
During the thirteenth century, Thibaud de Beaumont became lord of Pontarmé through his marriage to Jeanne la Bouteillière, daughter of Raoul le Bouteiller. After Thibaud died in 1278, their children sold half of Pontarmé and the neighboring village of Thiers, including its castle, to the bishop of Beauvais. Jeanne’s brother Anseau, also called Ancelin, retained the other part of Pontarmé. When he died without issue in 1309, the lordship passed to his nephew Adam and, in 1328, to Adam’s son Jean.
Between 1351 and 1353, members of the Bouteillers sold most of their possessions to Robert de Lorris, a chamberlain to the king. A chamberlain was a high-ranking officer connected with the ruler’s household. Robert thus became lord of Pontarmé alongside the bishop of Beauvais. After he was accused with other royal councillors of contributing to the French defeat at Poitiers in 1356, he narrowly avoided the confiscation of his property.
The Great Jacquerie, a major peasant uprising in northern France in 1358, brought violence to the surrounding region. Robert de Lorris’s castle at Thiers was looted and burned, but Robert and his family survived after making promises to the insurgents. Pontarmé appears to have escaped this attack. After Robert’s death, Pierre Lorfèvre, an advocate in the Parlement of Paris, gradually bought lands at Pontarmé from Robert’s widow, and the Lorfèvre family eventually became lords of the place.
War, division, and reconstruction
The part of the lordship that remained with the Lorris family passed through Ysabeau de Montmorency, widow of Guérin Lancelot, and their daughter Jehanne de Loris. Jehanne and her husband, Pierre de Pacy, died without descendants, and their heirs sold the lordship to Maurice de Rully on 28 May 1414. Maurice was the king’s cupbearer, a court officeholder historically responsible for serving the ruler’s drink. The deed describes Pontarmé as a substantial residence with houses, barns, gardens, and surrounding ditches.
Maurice de Rully died in 1422, and his brother Philippe inherited Pontarmé. Philippe was a royal councillor in the Parlement of Paris, a central judicial institution of the French monarchy, and treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle. During the Hundred Years’ War, the prolonged conflict between the English and French crowns, the castle was dismantled in 1431 at the request of the inhabitants of Senlis. They complained that it had become a refuge for brigands.
Philippe’s nephew Pierre de Chauvigny succeeded him in 1439 and sold Pontarmé to Jean de Chalon on 25 January 1452. Jean was a knight and royal chamberlain, and had married Jeanne Lorfèvre in 1448. Legal proceedings concerning the marriage settlement and inheritance led Jeanne and her second husband, Thomas de La Lande, to obtain shares in the undivided lordship in 1460. The bishop of Beauvais retained his separate share.
By 1477, Jeanne Lorfèvre was married to Pierre de Fresnes. Financial difficulties connected with the couple’s insufficient income led to the sale of the lordship to Pierre Lorfèvre and his wife, Geuffrine Baillet, on 11 August 1493. They retained the right to use the castle and receive its benefits during their lifetimes, but both died before 1499. Their children, Bertrand and Jeanne, became coheirs, and Bertrand appears to have become lord of Pontarmé.
Bertrand Lorfèvre and his wife, Valentine Lhuillier, probably built the present castle during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The new building rose on the remains of the castle dismantled in 1431. Its position near the surrounding forests suggests that it served principally as a hunting residence, while the family’s main activities and residences were in Paris.
Chantilly estate and agricultural use
After Bertrand and Valentine died, Constable Anne de Montmorency acquired their four daughters’ separate shares of Pontarmé between May 1543 and November 1545. A constable held one of the highest military offices in the French kingdom. Anne’s purchases formed part of his effort to enlarge the Chantilly hunting domain, and Pontarmé remained incorporated into that estate until the French Revolution.
An inventory from 1632 describes a low residential building containing a kitchen, hall, upper rooms, attic, and cellars. The estate also had a deteriorated four-bay barn that was rebuilt, four stables for horses and cattle, and a gatehouse with an upper room, attic, and pigeon loft. The gatehouse was linked to a drawbridge and covered with tiles.
After Duke Henri II de Montmorency was executed on the king’s orders on 30 October 1632, the king retained the right to use the Chantilly domain, while its bare ownership passed to the duke’s sister, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, and her husband, Henri II de Bourbon-Condé. Under the Montmorency and Condé families, the principal building functioned as a hunting relay, a residence or stopping place supporting aristocratic hunting. The outbuildings and stables operated as a farm.
At an unknown date, probably after the Revolution, the residential building itself was converted into a farm structure. Agricultural use continued until 1910, when the property changed hands. The new owners progressively restored the castle and returned it to residential use. The fortified gate, the bridge before it, and the complete moat system were registered as historic monuments by an order of 6 October 1986. The property remains privately owned.
Remains
Château de Pontarmé occupies an approximately square island surrounded by moats supplied by a small river. The buildings form a rectangular courtyard, with the fortified entrance on the western side and the principal residential building extending along the entire eastern side. The castle stands at the northern edge of Pontarmé beside the former national road, now the RD 1017, and the Chemin du Vieux Château. The Chantilly Forest begins immediately to the north, while the western facade and gate face the meadows of the Thève valley.
Fortified entrance
The western entrance is a fortified gatehouse, a defensive building controlling access to the courtyard. A stone bridge crosses the moat before it; this bridge replaced the original drawbridge. The carriage entrance has a basket-handle arch and is surmounted by machicolations, projecting openings or galleries through which defenders could drop objects or liquids onto attackers below. Two large piers flank the entrance and end above the machicolations.
On the courtyard side, the passage opens beneath a pointed arch. The upper room receives light from the west and east through two large mullioned windows, which are divided vertically by stone members called mullions. At least the western window dates from the Renaissance. The northern and southern sides contain two small rectangular windows divided by a mullion and placed beneath semicircular relieving arches.
A pigeon loft was installed beneath the roof of the gatehouse. At its northwestern corner, the wall contains two loopholes, narrow openings used for observation or defense. A lean-to annex is attached to the building, with small rectangular or pointed-arched windows framed by moldings.
Residential building
The residential building occupies the full eastern side of the courtyard and has Renaissance-style mullioned windows. Its northern section rises to two levels and is preceded on the courtyard side by a horseshoe-shaped stair turret. The turret is the only part of the castle built entirely of dressed stone, although only its lowest courses are ancient.
Two of the three large dormer windows with triangular pediments have been completely reconstructed, including one facing the moat. The southern section has no upper floor. On the courtyard side, its facade is concealed behind a recent gallery that does not correspond stylistically with the castle. Its roof has two gabled dormers and five additional dormers facing the moat.
Variations in the masonry, including different forms of rubble stone, reveal rebuilt portions and the extent of the damage caused when the building was used as a farm. The ground and upper floors each contain two rooms heated by fireplaces and separated by a small cabinet. Although the building presents a sixteenth-century appearance, it is principally a reconstruction inspired by that period’s architecture. The ancient fabric of the residential building therefore differs from the more fully preserved fortified entrance.
Courtyard wings and later fabric
A northern wing that once closed the courtyard appears on a plan of 1764 but has since disappeared. The low wing adjoining the gatehouse on the north and the building set at right angles to it belong to the twentieth-century transformation that changed the farm back into a château. The southern low wing beside the gatehouse and the building closing the southern side of the courtyard have also undergone successive alterations that changed their original character.
