Pont-l'Abbé castle

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North elevation of the Pont-l'Abbé castle

The castle Pont-l'Abbé ( French Château de Pont-l'Abbé or Château des Barons du Pont ) is a fortress in the Breton town of Pont-l'Abbé in the Finistere region . It was built between the 13th and 18th centuries, but only a few parts are still preserved today, as the majority of the building was laid down in the 19th century. Founded by the Lords of Pont, it has passed through numerous hands in the course of its history. The remainder of the building has belonged to the city of Pont-l'Abbé since 1836. This is called today the town hall used as well as museum and is available as inscribed monument historique since December 2, 1926, listed building . An outside inspection is possible at any time free of charge.

history

The land around Pont-l'Abbé belonged to Loctudy Abbey in the High Middle Ages and, like the whole of Brittany, was repeatedly the target of Norman raids or occupied by them. When Æthelstan had expelled the Normans, a family found the area deserted and built a moth on a small island in the Rivière de Pont-l'Abbé , right at the head of a bridge there. After this, the castle owners called themselves seigneurs du Pont ( German lords of Pont ). The first member of this family known by name since the 13th century was Juhel. In the following time the Lords of Pont were able to increase their land holdings and thus their sphere of influence considerably. In the 13th century the seigneurie was one of the largest in Brittany and its masters were accordingly powerful. With the consent of Loctudy Abbey, they replaced their Motte with a much larger stone castle at the end of the 13th century . Within the curtain wall , Hervé IV. Du Pont founded a chapel in 1350, but one of his Protestant successors, Charles du Quélennec, drove out the Catholic clergy. Subsequently unused, the church building fell into disrepair.  

Castle and town of Pont-l'Abbé in the 17th century

The complex, which was renovated in the 15th century, was damaged during the Huguenot Wars in 1590. It was in the hands of the royal party under the command of a certain Trogoff, who not only behaved tyrannically and ruthlessly towards the inhabitants of Pont-l'Abbés, but also made the area unsafe and devastated, so that the residents called the captain ( French capitaine ) Lézonnet from Concarneau called for help. He then besieged the castle with his men. After Trogoff was killed by an arquebus hit , the castle crew surrendered to the besiegers. In 1675, the facility was damaged again during the uprising against the paper tax , also known as the Révolte des Bonnets Rouges ( German  revolt of the red hats ). It was a furious uprising by the Bretons in response to levies newly introduced by Jean-Baptiste Colbert . They ravaged the castle and set it on fire. After the unrest ended, the system was repaired again. After the castle and the barony of Pont-l'Abbé had been sold to the d'Ernothon family in 1685, the brothers François-Joseph and Jean-Théophile d'Ernothon left on the medieval vaults between the west and west in the first quarter of the 18th century East tower build a new lodging . The stones used for this came from the former Coatmeur Castle in Landivisiau . Jean-Théophile later went mad and committed suicide in 1738 by throwing himself out of one of the logis windows.

During the French Revolution , the cellars of the castle in Pont-l'Abbé were used as a prison. Two well-known inmates were the author Anne-Marie Audouyn de Pompéry and Marie Hortense Jeanne du Haffont, who later became the wife of the Navy and Finance Minister Christophe de Chabrol de Crouzol . The western tower of the complex was almost completely demolished during the revolutionary years in order to use its stones to repair the city's harbor basin. Because the last Baron von Pont, Jean Georges Claude Baude de Saint-Père, had emigrated during the Revolution , his property was confiscated and sold to private individuals on the 25th Pluviôse of the year VII (February 13th 1799). Most of them had their parts torn off to make room for apartments and gardens. Around 1830 the height of the east tower was reduced by one storey and a new helmet was put on it. The battlements of the Tower and his machicolations was doing mostly destroyed. Shortly afterwards, in 1836, the town of Pont-l'Abbé acquired the remains of the castle complex and set up the mayor's office, schools and a police station there. Five years later, in 1841, she had the few defensive walls and fortifications that were still in place .

In 1954, the preserved east tower was restored in order to set up the Musée Bigouden , a museum for local history and folk art. The following year it celebrated its opening and since then has shown in a permanent exhibition exhibits on everyday life and traditions in Bigoudenland . These include earthenware bowls and plates, traditional clothing, musical instruments, furniture and equipment from agriculture and fishing. Since 2010 there have also been temporary special exhibitions in the museum.

description

View of the residential building from the southeast

The castle Pont-l'Abbé stands in the middle of the city. Before the majority of it was torn down in the 19th century, it had an almost oval floor plan and was surrounded by a 600-meter-long circular wall with several round towers . The wall enclosed by a battlement was three meters thick and about five to six meters high. There were two castle gates to which drawbridges led: one in the north next to the massive east tower, and one on the south side facing the city. Depth, fed by the flow of watering surrounded the plant.

Today only a residential building from the 18th century and parts of two adjoining round towers from the 13th century are preserved. They were built from carefully hewn stone blocks. The huge round tower on the west side of the Logis has almost completely disappeared. Today only its substructure still exists. The east tower houses the Musée Bigouden and is therefore completely modern in its interior. In its outer walls, however, you can still discover various loopholes and old cross-frame windows . A narrow, protruding stair tower with a spiral staircase inside leads to the highest room in the museum.

literature

  • Yann Brékilien: Les châteaux bretons. Ouest-France, Rennes 1983, p. 104.
  • Noël Broëlec: Châteaux et manoirs de Bretagne. Minerva, Geneva [et al.] 1987, ISBN 2-8307-0040-6 , pp. 58-59.
  • Gérard Le Moigne: Le château de Pont-l'Abbé. In: Bulletin de la Société archéologique du Finistère. Volume 131, 2002, ISSN  0249-6763 , pp. 185-216.
  • Michel de Mauny: Châteaux du Finistère. Nouvelles Éditions Latines , Paris n.d., p. 26.
  • Gwyn Meirion-Jones, Michael Jones: Lovable castles of Brittany. Ouest-France, Rennes 1991, ISBN 2-7373-0875-5 , pp. 68-70.

Web links

Commons : Pont-l'Abbé castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ^ G. Meirion-Jones, Michael Jones: Lovable castles of Brittany. 1991, p. 68.
  3. ↑ a b Entry of the castle in the database of topic-topos.fr ( Memento from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ a b c d Information about the castle on the website of the municipality of Pont-Pont-l'Abbé , accessed on October 6, 2015.
  5. ↑ Y. Brékilien: Les châteaux bretons. 1983, p. 104.
  6. ↑ a b Entry of the roof structure in the database of topic-topos.fr ( Memento from September 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Armand du Châtellier: La baronnie du Pont, ancien évêché de Cornouailles. In: Revue des provinces de l'Ouest (Bretagne, Poitou et Anjou). Vol. 5, 1857, p. 580 ( digitized version ).
  8. ↑ Dating from M. de Mauny: Châteaux du Finistère. No year, p. 26. Yann Brékilien dates the still-preserved east tower to the 15th century. See Y. Brékilien: Les châteaux bretons. 1983, p. 104.

Coordinates: 47 ° 52 '0.9 "  N , 4 ° 13" 20.4 "  W.