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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

Château Mennechet is an eclectic building built around 1880 on the hillside of Mont-Conseil, in Chiry-Ourscamp (Oise, Hauts-de-France). He was commissioned by Alphonse Mennechet de Barival (1812-1903), a wealthy collector of Saint-quentinos, and was to serve as a gallery to exhibit his 69 paintings, sculptures and faiences. Designed as a tribute to his wife Henriette Caroline Paillet, the castle is part of an architectural ensemble including two manor houses, stables and a Moorish tower (the Folie), today destroyed. Its fashioned style, blending Renaissance elements and symbolic ornaments (chimers, fleurs de lys), reflects the aesthetic ambition of its sponsor.

At the death of Mennechet in 1903, the unfinished castle was left to the city of Saint-Quentin with its collection, while its heir, Louis Hugues-Mennechet, dilapidated the remaining heritage. Damaged during the two world wars (the tower and a mansion were destroyed in 1914-1918), the building fell into ruins. Despite a peril order in 2007 and attempts to demolish, cleaning work in 2008 reveals an unknown vaulted cellar. Ranked a historical monument in 2011 thanks to the action of the Prometheus association, there remains a fragile testimony of artistic utopia of a 19th century patron.

The architecture of the castle-galerie, 60 meters long and 40 meters high, is distinguished by its 96 double columns and carved frontons. Built without mortar by simple embossing of local stones, the structure never received its windows. Dependencies, such as a ammunition depot during World War II, still bear traces of concrete. Stones came from nearby quarries, and labour was local. Today, only the ruins of the castle remain, recalling a man's disproportionate ambition to celebrate art and marital love.

Alphonse Mennechet de Barival, born of a Saint-Countine family, owes her fortune to her marriage to Henriette Caroline Paillet, daughter of an amateur of art. From 1855, he acquired land at Chiry-Ourscamp, strategic between Paris and Saint-Quentin thanks to the railway. His project, combining private museum and funeral homage (the 42-metre Moorish tower, destroyed in 1914), illustrates 19th-century architectural romanticism. Without a direct heir, his 1903 will dispersed his collection and entrusted his estate to an indelicate nephew, sealing the decline of the whole.

The preservation of the Mannechet castle owes much to Jean-Yves Bonnard, a resident of Chiry-Ourscamp. In the 1990s, his research on Mennechet and the Prometheus association led to a first request for classification in 2006, rejected. Finally registered in 2011, the site has since benefited from legal protections. The work of 2008, led by a new owner, allowed to rediscover forgotten architectural elements, such as a vaulted cellar, while stabilizing the ruins. The castle now embodies the challenges of preserving the regional industrial and artistic heritage.

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