The Château de St-Ferriol is a château-fort (castle), built in the sixteenth century towards the end of the period of medieval castle building. Gunpowder and firearms had rendered traditional castle building techniques obsolete, and castles were still being built only in remote areas - like Scotland and the Languedoc - where local wars still raged.
other castles in the area it is located at the highest point
of a village, next to the church. The village would have built
up around it, the villagers living in a symbiotic relationship
with the chatelain. They would have provided labour - cooks,
cleaners, retainers, guards, clerks, and so on - perhaps fifty
or more. In times of trouble he would provide a safe refuge,
everyone repairing to the castle for safety, and to share in
The Château de St-Ferriol used the latest mililary techniques of the period, notably bastions placed at the four corners of a rectangular building enclosing an inner court. These bastions are furnished with gun ports (cannoniers) to provide covering fire to all external walls. These cannoniers were the logical successors to traditional loopholes or arrowslits.
changes, made around 1600 made the building a more comfortable
residence. Most of the old medieval windows were replaced by
the latest Renaissance style mullioned windows, providing much
more light. (A few medieval windows survive, including all of
the windows in one room). A new stone staircase was put in,
and six monumental fireplaces were build.
Very little seems to have happened to the château since this time, except that it seems to have been partitioned into two, once in the seventeenth century, and then again in the early twentieth century. There are a large number of architectural puzzles - walls that are clearly not original, others that appear to predate the present building, no sign of a well, certain work carried out in a different stone, an external door on the first floor leading nowhere, a particularly unusual fireplace on the top floor, and so on.
The fabric of the building has suffered badly since the French Revolution, and the building had not been occupied since the early twentieth century. It was used as a farm building for many years, and two of the bastions were used as quaries for village houses. One wing, the old Presby fell down in the early twentieth century.
The château is now undergoing a long a programme of restauration, the objective being to return it, as far as possible, to its state in around 1600, using original materials and techniques.