The alternating red and black bricks of the Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Délivrance create a striking architectural feature in Coyecques. The town’s building history also includes a church, several chapels, a château and a brick mill. The buildings differ in their periods of construction, materials and surviving details. This gives you a clear cultural focus when choosing a destination; the wider landscape offers a perspective of its own.

Churches and chapels: different building phases

The Église Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens is a stone building from the final phase of the Gothic period. Its tower dates from the 17th century, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in the 19th century. This means that different historical phases can be distinguished in the same building: the older tower and the later reconstruction of the rest of the structure. This sequence is a more precise way of understanding its architectural history than assigning a single date to the entire church.

The Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Délivrance was built in 1947 by monks from the Abbaye de Wisques. As an ex-voto chapel, it is elaborately decorated with brick: red and black bricks alternate, complemented by mauve-coloured stained-glass windows and a ceramic scene at the east end. The alternating colours structure the brickwork; glass and ceramics add further materials to the design. The construction date and decoration therefore offer two different ways to understand this chapel.

The Chapelle Notre-Dame des Affligés was built in 1869. Its walls are made of white stone, with a brick base beneath them. It also features a rib vault and a round-arched portal with a drip moulding. The architectural term “rib vault” refers to a vault with intersecting ribs; here, alongside the materials and portal design, it is one of the specific architectural features. The Chapelle Saint-Joseph was built in 1935. For the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Bon-Secours, by contrast, the year 1934 refers to a restoration: it was incorporated into the construction of a house, and an ironwork portal and an inscription have been preserved. Construction and restoration are therefore different kinds of historical information.

Château and mill

The Château de Capelle-sur-la-Lys was the historic centre of a fief that belonged to the Seigneurie of Coyecques. This describes its historical role; the structure of the buildings is a separate aspect. The château comprises a stone building complex with a pavilion featuring a mansard roof and a moat that is permanently filled with water. The historical context of the fief and the architectural features can therefore be considered separately.

The Moulin Louvet is a brick mill. It retains parts of its defensive structure and openings typical of mills, including hatches for a rope pulley. This distinguishes the mill from the religious buildings and the château: here, the surviving features of mill construction take centre stage. Together, the buildings illustrate different forms of local heritage, whose history cannot be reduced to a single period or building type.

The wider landscape

From its source to Coyecques, the landscape of the Haute vallée de la Lys brings together wooded slopes, meadows and settlements on the valley floors. Between Fruges and Coyecques, the Haut Artois stretches across a rural landscape of long-distance trails and small woods. The two descriptions have different focuses: in the Haute vallée de la Lys, slopes, meadows and valley floors shape the landscape; in the Haut Artois, rural areas, trails and smaller wooded areas are part of the picture. If you would like to take the landscape into account when choosing a destination, alongside its architectural history, this wider regional setting offers a complementary perspective on Coyecques.

Discover more destinations: Arras, Conchil-Le-Temple, Senlecques, Marquise, Thièvres, Auchy-Lès-Hesdin, Cucq, Le Sars

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