The farm of the seigneurial castle of Montfermeil became Museum of crafts

The 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 was then common, it became a seigneurial farm in 1700, when the minister Chamillart, then lord of Montfermeil, reunited this bourgeois house and its commons to his domain. Acquired during the eighteenth century by the Hocquart family, it remained 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 seigneurs, who owned most of Montfermeil’s land, made the farm flourish. Cattle, cows and horses, sheep and poultry were raised there, cereals and fodder were brought under the vast roofs… the farm was therefore an important income with its multiple productions.
Surrounded by walls and high fences, the farm had reached almost intact until the Second World War. For sale after the liberation, the complex was acquired by a private individual who could not assume the heavy maintenance and restoration costs and demolished in 1947 all the central part and 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 different activities that could be found in a village such as Montfermeil at the beginning of the 20th century.
The collection of exclusively manual tools, presented by crafts, is divided into four exhibition rooms, on two levels. The first room on the ground floor is dedicated to agriculture, vineyard tools and vegetable tools but also tools and objects related to soil preparation (tillage, harrowing, etc.), seeding and plant care (sowing, pruning, weeding, binage, etc.), until the harvest and the associated treatments (harvesting, threshing, winnowing, harvesting, vinification, etc.) without forgetting the care given to the draught animals.
The second room on the ground floor is more particularly dedicated to the forest trades, because the village of Montfermeil was then partly enclosed in the forest of Bondy. So there are the tools of lumberjacks, long-sawers, coalmen.... as well as the craftsmen who worked wood, carpenters, sabotiers, coopers, charrons… and a whole series of traps then widely used in fields and forests.
In the village, other workers worked to satisfy 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 the 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… The building trades are also represented, quarrymen, stonemasons, masons, plasterers, locksmiths, plumbers, roofers, tilers, etc. as well as the trades most often exercised by women, laundry, ironing, spinning, sewing, embroidery, lace, making artificial silk flowers, cooking…
You can also discover the collection of animal-drawn materials, exhibited outdoors, Brabants, mowers, rakers, tedders, etc.