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Origin and history

The Mannechet Castle is a late 19th-century building (circa 1880) built in Chiry-Ourscamp, Oise, on the side of Mount Council. He was commissioned by Alphonse Mennechet de Barival (1812-1903), a wealthy heir of Saint-quentinos who had made a fortune by his marriage with Henriette Caroline Paillet, and was to serve as a gallery-museum to exhibit his 69 paintings, sculptures and faiences. Designed as a tribute to his wife, the project also includes two manor houses, stables and a Moorish tower (the Folie), now destroyed.

The castle, of Henry II style with 96 columns and frontons decorated with chimeras, remains unfinished at the death of Mennechet in 1903. His collections are bequeathed to Saint-Quentin, and the heir, Louis Hugues-Menechet, dilapide the family fortune. Damaged during the two world wars (the tower and a mansion were destroyed in 1914-1918), the castle was abandoned and partially cleared in 2008, revealing an unknown vaulted cellar.

Ranked at the Historic Monuments in 2011 after years of local mobilization (notably by Jean-Yves Bonnard and the Prometheus association), the castle is a unique testimony of an interrupted architectural and artistic dream. Its stones, extracted from the local quarries, and its construction without mortar (dry enclosure) illustrate the enormous ambition of its sponsor. Today in ruins, it symbolizes both the passion of a collector and the vicissitudes of history.

The original set included, in addition to the castle-galerie (60 m long), two manor houses with starry ceilings and marked woodwork, destroyed during the First World War. The tower of La Folie, 42 meters high with 237 steps, was dedicated to the memory of the wife of Mennechet. The stables and the mausoleum, located below and at the top of Mount Council, completed this eclectic architectural complex, mixing neogothic styles, Henry II and Moorish.

The labour came from the surrounding villages, and the materials of the local quarries owned by Mennechet. After his death, the periclite site: used as a ammunition depot during the Second World War (visible concrete tracks), it barely escaped demolition in 2007. The works of 2008 allowed partially to stabilize the ruins, but the castle still awaits a large-scale restoration.

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