Photo : Havang(nl) / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Château de Créminil
Etymologically, Créminil would mean "chalk manor". The castle was probably built in the fifteenth century on the ruins of a bastide destroyed by the English after Crécy. Burned in 1543, the castle was restored or even rebuilt in the following century. This typical residence of the late medieval period consists of an irregular twelve-sided polygon, built on a rounded mound surrounded by wide moats fed by the water of the Laquette and now serving as an ornamental pond. The walls are raised in dressed chalk on older flint and sandstone foundations laid in a chequerboard, the buildings are reinforced at the corners by towers, corbelled turrets and buttresses. The curtain walls are reinforced at the corners by towers, turrets and buttresses carrying watchtowers. The drawbridge and its old gate, still fitted with its old knocker (a door hammer mounted on a hinge), serve an inner courtyard bordered by dwellings remodelled in the eighteenth century. Wide open, on the south side, to the perspective of the gardens, the château de Créminil is in this respect a charming example of architecture designed for a lord's pleasure.
