Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The castle of Noyen came into being in 1553, when François de Kernevenoy, great squire of King Henry II, acquired the land to establish a royal stud. Between 1554 and 1556, a first castle was built by architect Philibert Delorme on royal grounds, including stables maintained by the crown until 1571. Upon the death of François de Kernevenoy, the estate passed on to his son François-Claude, then to his aunt Marie, before being passed on by marriage to the Fleuriot family, then to the d'Acigné in the seventeenth century. In 1675, Louis XIV erected Noyen as a county for Claude d的Acigné, but for lack of heirs, the estate was sold in 1715 to Corentin de Carné, then to Charles Jean-Pierre Barentin de Montchal in 1736.

Between 1736 and 1738 Barentin de Montchal built a wide avenue bordered by poplars and exchanged plots with local farmers. Upon his death, his son Charles-Paul and his wife Louise-Magdeleine Bertin de Vaugien inherited the estate. She became a widow in 1765 and launched a complete reconstruction of the castle between 1766 and 1770, preserving only the commons of the sixteenth century. She shaves the old building, replaces the gate with a grid preceded by a dry ditch, and erects a new castle in sandstone and bricks, surrounded by beds and a redesigned park.

The French Revolution marked a turning point: in 1794 the owner Charles Jean-Pierre, emigrated with his family, saw his property sequestered and declared national. The family returned under the First Empire and recovered the castle, where Charles-Jean Pierre died in 1823. His grandson, Félix Le François des Courtis, inherited the estate in 1829 but sold it in 1839 to Auguste Rodolphe Darblay, MP and postmaster. The latter installs a beet distillery, exploited with his grandsons Jules, Henri and Léon Muret. After their death in 1906-1907, the castle passed to the Lemercier and then Salin families, remaining in individual between the descendants until today.

The architecture of the present castle, probably influenced by François-Nicolas Lancret (author of the nearby castle of La Motte-Tilly), consists of a central body flanked by two wings of 16th century communes, slightly redesigned. The 60-hectare park, crossed by a long driveway initially lined with poplars (replaced by plane trees after the hurricane of 1861), also includes a farm and the old chapel of the first castle, which became the village church. The ensemble, protected as historical monuments since 1960 and 2009, is now being rehabilitated by the Fondation Mérimée for an opening to the public.

The protection of the castle covers the entire estate: the castle and its moats (classified in 1960), the park and its main driveway (registered in 1961), as well as the communes and a hunting lodge (classified in 2009). These measures preserve both the Renaissance remains of the communes, the 18th century developments, and the historical landscape, including the old stone bridge on the Old Seine. The history of the castle thus reflects the architectural and social evolutions of the Île-de-France, from the royal studs of Henry II to the agricultural transformations of the 19th century.

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