Château de Cossoles, Medieval castle in Chevilly, France
Château de Cossoles is an 18th-century castle built on the site of an earlier fortified castle, of which only the marsh marking the old moats remains. The main building has five bays, a ground floor, a first floor and an attic lit by dormer windows. A square pavilion with a raised second floor and an extra attic level was added in the 19th century. The estate also includes stables, a gardener's house and a farmhouse.
A fortified castle stood at Cossoles in the Middle Ages, taking part in the defence of the forest of Loge, today the forest of Orléans; only the marsh marking its moats survives. The present building dates from the 18th century and replaced it on the same spot. In 1874 the estate was sold to the De La Tour d'Auvergne family, and in 1896 Émile Léon Marie Nail Demelette became owner.
The name Cossoles appears in medieval charters as Coissoles or Coessolles, borne by a family that still held land there in the 13th century. The estate's woods were a resource: in 1403 a monk of Toury received a cartload of wood per day from the forest of Coissolles, and in 1204 Philippe Auguste confirmed a grant of 20 arpents of wood at Cossoles before the bishop of Orléans.
The château stands about 5 km east of Chevilly's village centre, on the northern edge of the Orléans forest at roughly 125 m altitude, near the forest road of Chapelles and the spot called la Table aux Loups. It is private property of the Binoche family, so visits are limited to the exterior and the surrounding lanes.
The forest road of Chapelles and the spot called la Table aux Loups lie near the castle, on the northern edge of the Orléans forest. A Cassini map shows a 17th-century road running from Orléans to Cossoles, though archives cannot tell whether it served the present château or the fortified one.
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