Round and About : 'Marthon' Part Two

For Marthon Part one see here.

Looking down from the hill where the castle keep still stands, one can clearly see the River Bandiat running through the valley below and between the streets of the town.  The Bandiat is a small (and quite short) river, only 91 km long and is a tributary of the Tardoire. The river bridge in the town has been restored fairly recently, as you can see below.

Quite near to the river is the building below.  The entrance doors look more appropriate to a religious building, but the structure itself  does not. On further investigation, I think this is the Chapelle-Porte (chapel-doorway), the gateway to the castle. This is a tall building which combines a chapel on the upper storey and the gateway to the castle below and was built into the defensive walls around the castle. See Here

On the opposite side of the road and a little further on, is the Church of Saint Martin

The roman style Church of Saint-Martin  on the edge of the town has seen better days, the stonework being badly cracked in some places and having temporary timber supports in others. It is unusual, in my limited experience here, to see a church in a rather neglected state; religious life does however go on here regularly, judging by a paper list of services pinned up near the entrance. It does have some attractive features;  the photo above shows the belltower with its arched openings. The photo below shows two more -  the statue in a niche above the entrance and the unusual arch inset in the walls at ground level - this is called an 'enfeu' and is a tomb, likely to be that of a local dignitary, who would have been originally buried in the church wall itself.

Sadly the church door was locked, so we were unable to see what the inside looked like! Below is a modern plastic sign in French and English, highlighting the features of the building.

As always click on the photo to see it larger and read the writing.

This rear church wall appeared to have small openings which had been filled in over the years, but the one on the far right was in fact a very small stained glass window - see below. In other places, the stone has decayed and crumbled.

This house below was opposite the church, across a small lane. I just liked it as I thought that  the owners had done a fantastic job of restoration; I loved the well in the garden.

Here endeth the Tour of Marthon, but on the same day we also visited Mazerolles and there the church was open, so watch this space.

Round and About : 'Marthon' Part One

On Monday we had occasion to visit the small historic town of Marthon to do some business. We thought it was an interesting place, and with lots of photos taken, Nigel will help me write this up in two parts. 


Situated near the border with neighbouring Dordogne, on the banks of the gently flowing (well, most of the time, I hope!) river Bandiat, it reportedly has a population of about 500, hardly different from the year 1793, when records appear to start! In the late 1800’s, the townspeople numbered in excess of 700, but where they all went, we  could not discover! 


When we arrived we quickly found a small car-park; my first photo was of what I presume to be residential accommodation over some offices. Note the two pigeons in the pigeonnier!

We walked under this old arch 

into the centre of the town, imaginatively called "Main Street" and the main road through the town.

As in most small French towns, a weekly market is held; here in Marthon in a small flagged ground level space under one of the ancient stone buildings in this street.

One can understand how little this place has changed over the last 600 years or so. Not much concession is made for the motor vehicle! We saw a large articulated lorry negotiating this street - it mostly filled the space you can see between the dotted parking lines on the left and the kerb on the right!

The few narrow streets in the town centre are dominated by the ruins of the Chateau de Marthon, a polygonal shaped castle built in the Middle Ages. In its time, it must have been a formidable structure, providing means of shelter for the local residents from attack by hostile forces. These were the days of the 100 Years War between England and France, when the English occupied and controlled vast swathes of the countryside in this area. Today, only the castle keep and a few other bits of wall  remain, as you can see in the following pictures. This fragile tower is set high and clearly visible from  all around. It was reduced in height by 1 metre in 1960, presumably for safety reasons, as it is now looking rather wobbly!

This cave was under the castle; it looked pretty empty and I was not brave enough to go under the building to look closer!

The view from the castle with the church in the distance - centre of photo, just above the wall 

The river Bandiat running through the trees, with another small village and farm land in the background

The local hotel and restaurant - lunch (generally 5 courses) for 11 euro!

Hope that you enjoyed the first part of this walk about; the photos of the church and the river will be in part two.