Château de Vaux-sur-Poligny

Château de Vaux-sur-Poligny was built in the 19th century on the site of an oil mill and a sawmill belonging to the Benedictine Priory in the Reculée de Vaux. The property was designed by Abbé Joseph Petit, who was Superior of the Petit Séminaire between 1860 and 1876, in the buildings of the former priory.

The building came into the hands of Louis Milcent, a committed Christian and advocate of social Catholicism. He was the founder of the Syndicat des Fruitières du Jura and the Syndicat Agricole de Poligny, as well as the first Caisse de Crédit Mutuel Agricole. This was a Caisse whose network would grow and evolve into the present-day Crédit Agricole. It is above all to him that we owe the current construction of the château and the development of the park.

Ducat, an architect from Biel, was commissioned to build the château. The landscaping of the park was entrusted to Briche Michel, a landscape gardener who had created a number of parks in Vesoul and Besançon, and who worked at Vaux from 1873 to 1885. Briche was passionate about water and stone. At Vaux, he benefited from exceptional natural conditions. The property is criss-crossed by a small river, the Glantine, which rises not far from the château and suddenly, a few metres from the château, becomes an impressive waterfall (13 metres). Brice Michel made it the main feature of the garden. He built a tufa bridge over the waterfall, from where you can admire the impressive, abrupt cascade and follow the stream in a green setting. Brice Michel's worker Jérôme Bory (who also worked on the Parc Monceau in Paris) is responsible for these tufa constructions. He spent a number of months in Vaux from 1875, searching the valley floor for the tufa he needed. He also built a second bridge after the waterfalls, creating staircases to reach the water's edge and installing rockwork in several places. He even designed caves, one of which can be seen from the balcony of the château. In recent years, flooding on the Glantine has caused terrible damage to the banks, with the retaining walls collapsing. Major work had to be carried out in 2005 to consolidate the banks, and a way had to be found to channel the water and prevent it from fanning out as it falls.

Abbé Petit had his own private chapel in the château. When the Church and State separated in 1906, this chapel became the home of the statue of "Notre-Dame-de-Vaux", and on 3 July 1910, a large and moving procession passed through the village for its return to the priory built for it and erected in its honour. On 5 September 2010, a procession commemorated the 100th anniversary of the return of the Virgin, so dear to the people of Vaux.