Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The castle-farm of the Arrouaise, also called Grande Arrouaise, was erected in the 1850s in Oisy (Aisne) by Baron Seillière, within the agricultural and forestry estate of Guise. This brick mansion, flanked by turrets and equipped with an English park, is part of a modern complex including sweets, rational farms, and workshops (forge, mill). It symbolizes the industrial transformation of the estate after its acquisition by Seillière society, following the exile of the Duke of Aumale in 1852.

The estate originally belonged to Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, heir in 1830 of the 10,000 hectares of Guise, including forests and farms of Thiérache. Exiled after 1848, he returned in 1872 and found a transformed estate, with model farms like the Arrouaise, awarded for their agricultural innovations. The hamlet, autarchic, housed school, bakery and technical services, reflecting an advanced social organization for the time.

The castle, comfortable house of 40 windows, mixes bourgeois decorations (woodworks, living rooms) and functionality (caves, corridors). His facades still carry the arms of the Duke of Orleans. After the world wars, the estate was fragmented: the Arrouaise, sold to private individuals, remains a rare witness to the industrial castles. Today, two farms remain there, and the mansion was acquired in 2022 by a private owner.

The Oisy sugar plant and the five modern farms (bergery, cowries, stables) were built after the clearing of 500 hectares of forest in 1857, prehistoric vestige. These rational constructions, organised around a 200-metre square courtyard, illustrate the application of revolutionary 19th-century agricultural techniques, combining breeding, culture and mechanization (steam machine, workshops).

The return of the Duke of Aumale in 1872 marked an era of recognition for the Arrouaise, visited in 1883 and 1892. The Prince congratulated Director Lenglet on the agricultural medals he had won, including the gold at the Wassigny committee in 1892. The estate, passed to the Duke of Chartres and then to Guise, was finally dismantled after 1940, losing its historical unity.

Today, the Arrouaise embodies a unique agro-industrial heritage, where an agricultural activity persists (ovine farming, crops). Its castle, with neo-Louis XIII influences, and its farms bear witness to a productivist utopia, between princely heritage and capitalist innovation, in the Thierache of the nineteenth century.

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