Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The castle of Buzancy, mentioned in 1192 in an admission of the Counts of Grandpré, became in the sixteenth century the property of the family of Anglure de Bourlémont. Nicolas d'Anglure, lieutenant-general and marquis in 1658, was the last representative before his transmission to Jacques de Chastenet de Puységur, then to the Talaru. In 1756, the estate was awarded to Pierre-Guillaume Tavernier de Boullongne, royal treasurer, who entrusted his modernization to the architect Claude Bacarit. The latter razed the old castle, retaining only the ditches and cellars, to build a modern building whose horseshoe commons still remain.

In 1781, the castle was sold to Jacques-Mathieu Augeard, a general farmer. A fire destroyed him in 1784, causing a reconstruction from 1787 to 1790 by François-Joseph Bélanger. The new Palace, inspired by Versailles, has 80 rooms, a chapel, an ice gallery and a French-style park decorated with statues, including La Samaritaine facing a 700-metre water room. Augeard, imprisoned during the Revolution, emigrated after the castle was declared national property in 1792. The estate, occupied by foreign princes, was finally destroyed in 1808 after a new fire.

Today, only the entrance pavilion persists, the burrows (used as studs for the Ardennes horse), the stables and the water room. These remains, classified as historical monuments between 1982 and 2010, recall the ambition of a rural "little Versailles". An association, Les Amis du château d'Augeard, created in 2021, works to safeguard them. The stables, in hemicycle as in Versailles, have bossed facades and stone windows, while the park has partially returned to pasture.

The architecture of the communes, attributed to Claude Bacarit around 1760, reflects the versatile influence with a semi-circle plane and various openings (close doors, segmental lintel windows, cochère doors). The Boveries, classified in 1982, now house the Ardennes horse, a local symbol. The water room and the missing statues, like La Samaritaine, bear witness to the old grandeur of the estate, now reduced to remains and a tourist vocation (camping, mobile homes).

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