The best walks and hikes around Marthon

private property

free visit

Don't hesitate to get off the Flow Vélo to discover the village of Marthon. The detour is worth it!

On leaving Marthon, this castle was commissioned by Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, around 1560, to replace an old fortress burned down during the Hundred Years War. However, it was not until the 20th century that this construction was restored and completed. It is private property but can be enjoyed from the outside.

The church of Saint-Pierre de Feuillade dates from the 12th century. It originally depended on the Abbey of Baignes. Unfinished, the building has, as a bell tower, a campanile and Romanesque capitals.

The Château-neuf is an imposing residence located along the road to Nontron, at the eastern exit of the town of Marthon. Originally, the construction of the castle was the work of Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, lord of Marthon. He built the "new castle" in the 1560s to replace the old Romanesque castle which had been burned and damaged by the English during the Hundred Years' War in 1347. This building of the second French Renaissance remained unfinished due to of the death of the sponsor in 1566. Thereafter, the successive owners carried out some maintenance work, however not commensurate with the restorations carried out in the years 1900-1910 by the deputy Maurice Étienne Raynaud (Marthon 1860 - Paris 1927). This native of Marthon was a Radical deputy for Charente from 1906 to 1924, but also Minister of Agriculture in 1910-1911, then in 1913-1914 and finally Minister of the Colonies for a few months in 1914. Before this intervention, the south facade was surmounted by a wooden gallery underlined by a stone entablature and gargoyles forming consoles. This facade ended to the left of the grand staircase. The Renaissance project, suspended at the death of Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, probably planned to place the staircase in the center of the facade to obtain perfect symmetry. It is precisely the extension of the facade, to the left of the main staircase, that the deputy Raynaud had made in the years 1900-1910. The multi-purpose loggia, topped by a couple with a lantern and located above the porch which houses the main staircase, is also an addition from the beginning of the 20th century, like the hipped roof. To light the attic, this roof was equipped with skylights placed in line with the openings of the facade. The south facade is punctuated by numerous mullioned and cross-piece bays, framed by Ionic columns. The grid of this facade, created by the superposition of bays, forming vertical lines, by the cornice separating the two levels and the entablature which underlines the roof while constituting horizontal lines, is one of the architectural particularities of the Renaissance style in the French. However, we speak rather of an eclectic style for the Château-neuf, as the alterations of the 20th century were numerous and decisive for the general appearance of the residence.

Grassac was the seat of an archpriest who had been given in 1097 by Bishop Adhémar to the Abbey of Bourgueuil which united it to its priory Notre-Dame de Beaulieu in Angoulême. The church was enlarged, after the damage of 1570, by a north aisle which was to be vaulted with ribs. The vault and various restoration works were undertaken in the 19th century. The plan of the building is that of an enlarged rectangle with a bay under a bell tower and an apse in the extension of the initial nave. This first nave supported by flat buttresses and a projecting buttress from the 17th century, is vaulted by a flat plaster cradle. The bay under the bell tower is vaulted with a stone dome on horns, pierced with a hole for the bell and decorated with a false sky.

The castle had an enclosure independent of the ramparts which protected the city. The keep includes a lower room communicating only with the first floor via a circular bay pierced in the top of the dome. The first floor had only a narrow entrance, without a masonry staircase. A spiral staircase communicated with the second floor, also vaulted. Nothing remains of the platform.