Château de Taisey

The site presents a 17th-century principal house set beside the earlier fortification, arranged as a long central block with two shorter wings set at right angles. The later residence was built in the late 1600s on a raised basement level, the basement pierced by segmental-arched windows and capped by a horizontal stringcourse that runs around the main block. The overall composition includes a central projecting portion on the main façade reached by a curved, horseshoe-shaped external stair, and that projecting portion has a high, through round-arched window lighting its upper floor. Historical records link this campaign of work to Guillaume Magnien between 1685 and 1690, with Convers as architect and Marcellin-Martin Lenoir as builder.

Corner treatment and window detailing follow a deliberate pattern. The angles of the main block display concave-faced rusticated stone blocks, a repeated motif carried to the inner corners where the wings meet the central block, while the outer corners of the wings are finished with simple corner stonework. Large openings in the façades are topped by flat rectangular slabs. The attics are covered by steep, broken roofs that were certainly altered in the 1800s; these upper spaces are lit by small round “bull’s-eye” windows and by dormers on the side façades that have curved pediments, and the wings are finished with large triangular pediments pierced by a round oculus.

Survivals from the original medieval fortification are concentrated in a single square tower, the only element of the older house still standing. The tower’s first-floor entrance is a round-arched doorway set above the ground and shows the two grooves that once received a drawbridge, evidence of its defensive function. Inside the later west wing a wooden spiral staircase remains in place, complete with two newel posts, preserving an interior fixture from the period of later occupation. Overall, the ensemble shows the 17th-century adaptation of an earlier fortified site, with visible 19th-century alterations to the roofline and preserved features from both phases standing in situ.