Donneloye Castle

Donneloye Castle is a manor house in the municipality of Donneloye of the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is a Swiss heritage site of regional significance.

Little is known of the history of the manor of Donneloye in the Middle Ages. The last scion of the autochthonous family, Othenin de Donneloye, died circa 1387 without male issue: it is not known if a castle then existed in the village, but it seems probable.

The manor passed to Edouard de Provana, of a northern Italian family, who in 1386 married Marguérite de Donneloye, daughter of Othenin, and in 1440 Jacques de Glâne, lord of Villardin and de la Molière, and his descendants possessed it until 1528, when Catherine de Glâne married Aubert Loys. The manor was then split, and the castle acquired by the family of Roguenet (or Regnault) de Romont, who apparently made important architectural alterations to the edifice.

Before 1600 Petterman d'Erlach (1579-1635), a Bernese catholic, inherited the castle by his marriage to Marguerite Roguenet, and on his death it passed to a distant relative, colonel Louis von Roll (1605-1652) of Soleure (Solothurn), who made further substantial alterations, evidenced by an inscription dated 1639 on the south façade. On Von Roll's death his widow, Claire de Vallier, sold the building to Jean-Philippe Loys (1622-1676). Loys, an influential landowner and politician in the region, reintegrated the manor, acquiring the rights and lands which had been detached since 1528. It was probably during the tenure of Loys that the windows on the first floor were enlarged, around 1660. In 1711 the Bernese, who had long wanted to acquire the manor because of its strategic position between Yverdon and Moudon, managed to persuade Loys' descendants to sell the rights, customs and usages, the family retaining the castle, the right to dispense justice to the inhabitants of Donneloye and other nearby villages, and to maintain a prison, no doubt the tower near the castle. The castle from then on seems to have been little used and fell into disrepair, the Loys family choosing to live on their estates in Moudon and Lausanne.

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