Royère Castle

Royère Castle, locally known as Château de la Royère, lies, surrounded by farmland, just north of the village of Néchin and just a couple of hundred meters from the border with France, in the province of Hainaut in the Wallonia region in Belgium.

In old French, the word 'royère' means limit. This is probably how the castle got its name because, when it was built, it was situated on the border between Tournai and the lands of Lille.

The castle is the last example of a small, 13th-century, plain castle in this area. It clearly had a defensive purpose: a powerful, moated, polygonal enclosure built out of Tournai stone, equipped with three round watchtowers and a gatehouse defended by two semicircular towers. The entrance through the gatehouse would have been over a drawbridge.

Royère Castle was built by Arnould IV d'Audenaerde, bailiff of Flanders and Hainaut, in the first half of the 13th century. However, within the enclosure, foundations of a primitive keep dating back to the 10th-11th century were found, which would have been situated high on a feudal motte.

Later on, the castle came into the hands of the Counts of Flanders, then of the Gysoing family, before passing to the princes de Ligne until 1668, which is the probable date of its abandonment.

Nowadays, it's a beautiful ruin. It can be visited by appointment or on special days. When I visited this very nice ruin, there was a kind of morning mist which, in my opinion, gave the castle a fairy-tale atmosphere.

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