CHATEAU D'OUGE

Château d'Ouge is a fortified manor house built on three levels. It is flanked on the east by two round towers slightly higher than the dwelling, and on the west, overlooking the courtyard, by an octagonal tower containing a handsome spiral staircase. The three towers are pierced by firing embrasures, and the entrance door is topped by a bretèche from which projectiles could be thrown at would-be attackers. The vaulted cellar, half-buried, is built on the northern flank. The volumes are those of the original construction. However, most of the openings (windows, entrance door) were created or enlarged in the 1840s. The outbuildings, known as "hébergeages", were rebuilt in the 1850s along the same lines as the original buildings, but set back some fifteen meters. Château d'Ouge was built in 1553 by Jehan de Thon, squire, probably on the site of an earlier seigneurial house. He belonged to a family of ancient chivalry from the Barrois mouvant (modern-day Vosges). But he was a small lord, ruling over some twenty fires (households) - just one-sixth of the village's inhabitants. He exercised middle and lower justice (offenses punishable by the carcan or fines), the upper being held by the lords of Chauvirey. At the end of the 17th century, the last descendant of the de Thon family being a priest, the château and seigneury of Ouge passed on his death to Charles de Champagne, his mother?s great-nephew, who sold them in 1697. In 1699, the new owner, Jean-Etienne de Montessus, who had previously lived at Château de Vitrey, moved to Ouge with his family. In 1705, having become seigneur of Aigrevaux, near Vesoul, he leased Château d'Ouge to François-Salomon Régent. The latter, son of a notary from Chauvirey-le-Châtel, had bought a small portion of the barony of Chauvirey in 1687, with special permission from Louis XIV, as he was not a noble. He died in Ouge in 1723. His daughter Catherine-Françoise married a dragoon officer there a year later, François-Vincent Faivre, ancestor of the du Bouvot family. From 1729 onwards, Château d'Ouge was inhabited only by amodiators (receivers of seigniorial revenues), with noble owners making only short stays or visits. After the death of Count Antoine-François de Montessus (grandson of Jean-Etienne) in 1793, Château d'Ouge was left to fall into disrepair. In 1833, the heirs of the Comtesse de Montessus sold it, along with all the other properties left by her husband, to Charles-Auguste Leroi de Lisa (mayor of Vesoul from 1830 to 1833), who, ruined, sold it in 1838 to a farming couple from Ouge. Heavily in debt himself, the latter, after largely restoring the château, sold it in 1849 to a Parisian velvet merchant, Pierre-Nicolas Dupuis, and his wife Thérèse-Angélique Paulmard, a local girl with a tumultuous life. |The château remained in the Paulmard family for five generations, until 1980. For mysterious reasons, it escaped the village fire of 1636. It was occupied by coalition troops in 1814, again in 1815, by the Prussians in 1870 and by German officers in 1940-41. Château d'Ouge has been listed as a historic monument since 1989.
The property is privately owned. Visit the gardens and park around the château.

Private site: view of the exterior of the property.
Guided tours of park and gardens by appointment only.

DATAtourisme France