Photo : Havang(nl) / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Manoir de la Besvre
The earliest known mention of the lordship of La Besvre, in the Pas-de-Calais, dates from 1202, when Wenemarus de le Beverne was named as a witness in a charter of the priory of Saint-André-lès-Aire. In the 16th century it belonged to the Berghes Saint-Winoc family. Through the marriage in 1606 of Marie Adrienne de Berghes to Hughes, Count of Noyelles, it passed to that family, where it remained until 1670 and the marriage of Anne Marie Marguerite de Noyelles to Charles de Béthune Desplanques, Marquis d'Hesdigneul.
At the time of the Revolution, Eugène François, Prince of Béthune, was living in Tournai. He was therefore placed on the list of émigrés, and it is not certain that La Besvre was sold as national property. The estate remained in the Béthune family until 1882, when it was sold to industrialists and profoundly altered. Little is known about the old château or the circumstances of its creation and its changes in the 18th and 19th centuries.
