 A château is a "power house", as Sir John Summerson dubbed the British and Irish "stately homes" that are the British Isles' architectural counterparts to French châteaux.It is the personal (and usually hereditary) badge of a "family" that, with some official rank, locally represents the royal authority; thus, the word "château" often refers to the dwelling of a member of either the French royalty or the nobility, but some fine châteaux, such as Vaux-le-Vicomte, were built by the essentially high-bourgeois—people but recently ennobled