Donjon de Bours: Medieval Seigneurial Tower in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page7 sections
History
Donjon de Bours is a fourteenth-century medieval seigneurial tower in Bours, France, built in the architectural tradition of Artois and regarded as one of the area’s oldest noble residences. It belonged to a wider lordly estate with a castle domain, farm, and supporting buildings, of which the small castle tower now survives.
Medieval lords and the seigneurie
The first lords of Bours appear in charters issued by the counts of Saint-Pol at the end of the twelfth century. Adam de Bours is recorded as pledging the tithe of Bours to the Hospitallers of Haute-Avesnes. The Hospitallers were a religious-military order that maintained properties and combined charitable work with military service.
The lordship comprised two fiefs, meaning parcels of land held under feudal obligations to superior lords. One included the lands and castle held from Saint-Pol, while the lands of the Alighes were held from the castle of Arras. The name Alighes first appears in an account of the bailiffs of Arras in 1336.
The lords of Bours continued in succession until Jehan de Bours died without issue in 1389. Through his deceased mother, Jeanne de Mailly, who had been married to Mathieu de Bours, the estate passed to the Mailly family, a prominent noble lineage of Picardy.
War, inheritance, and decline
Artois was severely affected by the sixteenth-century conflicts between Francis I, king of France from 1515 to 1547, and Charles V, the Habsburg ruler of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. French troops burned the castle in 1537 and again in 1543. The fires destroyed the tower’s interior, while its sandstone walls survived.
During the sixteenth century, the tower passed to the Noyelles family. At the end of that century, the marriage of Alexandrine de Noyelle and Maximilien de Sainte-Aldegonde transferred the manor to the Sainte-Aldegonde family of Saint-Omer.
Debt arising from the Franco-Spanish wars placed the barons of Bours under financial pressure, and creditors seized the land for sale in 1699. Charles-Joseph de Sainte-Aldegonde later recovered the small lordship and took the title “Baron of Bours, Lord of Fresnes des Alliguez and other places.” After Charles-Joseph and his wife, Monique Cogé, died in 1735, the tower ceased to function as a seigneurial residence and declined into ruin. The farm remained inhabited.
Revolution and preservation
During the French Revolution, the abolition of feudal rights led to the estate being offered for sale. The Saint-Aldegonde family later bought it back. The farm buildings were demolished during the nineteenth century, and the estate was acquired by the Salmon family toward the end of that century. The intervention of Abbé Routier, a Catholic cleric, prevented the donjon from being destroyed.
The tower was entered on the supplementary inventory in 1946 and classified as a historic monument in 1965. A major restoration campaign directed by France’s heritage architects continued until the end of the 1980s. From 1982 to 2014, the building housed the offices of Bours town hall, while the Circle for Archaeological and Historical Research, a local archaeological and historical association, organized guided visits.
Management later passed to the Pernois community of communes, an intercommunal grouping of municipalities, which intended to establish a historical center. Between September 2014 and September 2015, work on the building envelope, including the roof, addressed urgent deterioration. The campaign included complete external repointing, renewal of the cellar’s groin vault, and repairs to the joinery.
Remains
The surviving building is a compact sandstone tower standing in a village depression at the center of Bours. It was built against a feudal motte, a raised earthwork that commonly supported a medieval lord’s residence or fortified structure. Its square main body is surrounded by six cylindrical turrets, creating the characteristic mass of the donjon despite its modest scale.
Tower and turrets
The donjon is constructed entirely from Artois sandstone. Four cylindrical turrets occupy the corners, while two more are centered on the northern and southern faces. Each is corbelled, projecting outward through successive courses of masonry rather than rising directly from the ground. Their diameters taper, and the size increases with distance from the former castle entrance. Small, steeply conical pepper-pot roofs cap the turrets.
The robust stonework gives the tower a fortified appearance, but its primary purpose was residential and ceremonial. It was intended to house the noble family rather than serve as a heavily defended castle. The turret walls are approximately 30 centimetres thick, a dimension consistent with that residential function. The exterior has little decorative treatment and is notably austere.
Defensive features and former castle complex
Defensive features survive in limited form. Traces of partially encircling moats remain around the tower, and these ditches were formerly filled with water. The cellar contains arrow slits, narrow openings through which weapons could be used from a protected position. Above the entrance, a murder hole allowed defenders to drop objects onto attackers, while a fixed bridge once provided the approach to the doorway.
The tower originally stood within a medium-sized Artois seigneurial castle complex. The upper court contained a garden, and the lower court held a farm with lightweight ancillary buildings. The lower court was entirely destroyed during the nineteenth century, leaving the donjon as the surviving part of the former estate.
