This room was imagined in the early 1990s as an alchemist’s dispensary, then an apothecary, what we would today call a chemist’s shop. You wouldn’t have found one of those in a castle though, of course, but in town. They were well established shops opened to everyone.

The chimney was, once again, added later on and after the ribbed-vault, as in the Western tower.

Look at the three Art Deco consoles from the 1930s. We bet these are the only ones of the sort you will ever be able to see in a medieval castle.

The three others represent human faces, two of them awkwardly restored. To the right of the chimney, the human face is crowned with waterleaf, an obvious nod to Citeaux and the Bourbon lords’ Cistercian foundations.

A beam from the scaffolding was left in the masonry when building work stopped abruptly.

© March 2023