Chateau-ferme de Wartet

The farm complex presents a compact layout in the regional Mosan tradition, combining a manor house, defensive tower, farmyard ranges, a large barn, stables, a manorial chapel and a former burial ground. Buildings cluster around a courtyard that was once defined by water and walled entrances, producing a fortified appearance that developed over several centuries.

The principal dwelling dates to the 1400s and 1500s and was originally built as a two-storey structure in sandstone. The lower level still shows that sandstone construction, while the upper floors were later rebuilt in brick and raised into two superimposed storeys. The main entrance is a later, baroque-style composition with an oval eye window set in stone above the door. At the rear of the house a brick sanitary projection marks a later alteration, and an elevated passage once linked the upper level of the dwelling to the gallery of the chapel.

A medieval square keep stands south of the main house and is connected to it by the principal gateway and tower. The defensive scheme of the site included circular corner towers built on two levels; two of those corner towers survive, one at the north-east angle and another immediately to the south of the keep. These masonry elements show the defensive character that the complex retained into the early modern period.

The working farm is concentrated in a north range dated to the first half of the 1700s, organized around a tower-porch that gives access to the yard and a small three-arched bridge. West of that tower a sandstone dwelling served as the farmer’s residence, and long sandstone stables extend to the east. To the west of the courtyard a large sandstone barn presents two portals opening onto the yard; its present 19th-century form follows substantial remodelling carried out in that century though the structure likely incorporates earlier fabric.

The chapel of Saint Apolline survives only as external masonry but records confirm its phases of construction, with the western portion built in the early 1600s and the choir rebuilt in the later 1600s. The west gable once bore a square bell-cote and an opening that gave access to the raised gallery linking chapel and manor. Inside the chapel walls remain numerous tomb slabs and several sculpted recumbent figures of local lords, among them a tomb associated with Guillaume d’Auxbrebis. A burial ground to the north contains slabs and funerary crosses dated between the 1600s and the 1800s.

The surrounding landscape retains evidence of the original water defenses and enclosures. A north-east pond once known locally as “li flot saint Roch” or “bideau” has been filled in. At the north-west corner a large enclosed garden sits between the barn and the farmer’s house; its corners were strengthened by small square turrets constructed in rubble at the ground level with brick above. Boundary walls once opened to the west and east through two gates that are now blocked. The fields that surround the group are partly subject to classification, and two trees near the entrance have been singled out as remarkable, including an old oak well known locally by the name “tree of the hanged.”