The seigneurial castle farm was for centuries the most important rural settlement on the Montfermeil plateau. Built around 1635, at the same time as a large bourgeois house of which it then constituted the commons, it became a seigneurial farm in 1700, when the minister Chamillart then lord of Montfermeil, united this bourgeois house and its commons to his domain. Acquired during the eighteenth century by the Hocquart family, it will remain in its possession, with the exception of the revolutionary period, until the subdivision of the estate at the end of the nineteenth century.
The various lords, possessors of most of the lands of Montfermeil, prospered the farm. Cattle, cows and horses, sheep and poultry, grain and fodder were kept under the extensive roofs… the farm was therefore a significant source of income from its multiple productions.
Surrounded by walls and high fences, the farm had survived almost intact until the Second World War. For sale after the liberation, the whole was acquired by an individual who could not assume the heavy costs of maintenance and restoration made demolish in 1947 all the central part then twenty years later the western part. Saved and restored by the Municipality of Montfermeil, the last remaining building became a museum in 1983.
The visit of the site first includes a presentation of the history of the farm, followed by a visit of the spaces dedicated to the various activities that could be found in a village as was still Montfermeil at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The collection of exclusively manual tools, presented by trades, is divided into four exhibition rooms, on two levels. The first room on the ground floor is devoted to agriculture, tools from winemakers and market gardeners, but also tools and objects related to soil preparation (ploughing, harrowing, etc.), seeding and plant care (sowing, pruning, weeding, hoeing, etc.), until the harvest and the associated treatments (harvesting, threshing, winnowing, harvesting, vinification, etc.) without forgetting the care given to draught animals.
The second room on the ground floor is more particularly dedicated to forest trades, because the village of Montfermeil was then partly enclosed in the forest of Bondy. So there are the tools of lumberjacks, long saws, coal workers… as well as those of craftsmen who worked with wood, carpenters, clog makers, coopers, charrons… and a whole series of traps then widely used in fields and forests.
In the village, other workers were busy meeting the needs of the population. These crafts occupy the entire first floor of the building. First the blacksmith, with a remarkable series of hammers and pincers, the carpenter and cabinetmaker with their planes, scissors and saws of all kinds, and all the craftsmen who contributed to the animation of the local life, shoemakers, saddlers, boilermakers, file cutters, engravers, watchmakers, butchers, etc. The building trades are also represented: quarrymen, stonemasons, masons, plasterers, locksmiths, plumbers, roofers, tilers, etc. as well as occupations most often carried out by women, such as laundry, ironing, spinning, sewing, embroidery, lace, making artificial silk flowers, cooking, etc.
To discover also the collection of equipment with animal traction, exposed outside, brabants, mowers, rake, tedder…