Un des châteaux emblématiques du Perche classé monument historique

Feugerets Castle

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF HISTORY

The Château des Feugerets is a 16th century Percheron manor, but it has remained in the same family for almost 500 years.

A 15th century fortified house

Coming from Bellême, the first known lord was Gervais Feugerais at the very beginning of the 14th century. He is then a literate bourgeois since he is a law graduate, tax lawyer of Perche in 1398.

Bertrand des Feugerets is undoubtedly at the origin of the fortified house of which a few mullioned windows remain on the central main building.

A 16th century mansion

Jean II of Feugerets "high and powerful lord of Feugerets and other places" wishes to mark his rise in the noble order in stone. An invoice for the delivery of tiles dated 1560 makes it possible to locate the construction of the two pavilions controlling access to the sleeping bridge and completing the promotion of the modest manor into a real castle surrounded by deep moats after the construction of a large round tower with three levels of fire rooms and a dungeon built around 1505 pierced with loopholes.

A tower with a gunboat loophole is still clearly visible.

The buildings of the farmyard whose roofs rest on consoles are established at the same time.

A castle17th-18th century pleasure boat centuries

Aimery des Feugerets, captain and governor of the town and castle of Bellême in 1682, master of the hunts whose portrait is kept in the castle, which has been embellished by the creation of a vast esplanade lined with high balustraded guardrails forming a terrace overlooking the lower courtyard and the construction of a remarkable double-revolution curved staircase giving access to the upper courtyard.

Captain of the Perche hunts from 1678, Aimery des Feugerets is said to have welcomed the Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV, to the castle on several occasions.

Portrait of the Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV and grandfather of Louis XV by Mignard

The interior was then refurbished, the central staircase disappearing in favor of a staircase in the large round tower. The single mullioned windows widen with large bays.

The rear facade is embellished with two elegant quarter-circle connecting bodies topped with imperial roofs covered with scale tiles.

In the 18th century, the Counts and then Marquis of Feugerets added a wing of outbuildings between the west pavilion and the big tower, this building topped with attics (disappeared in a fire) lit by nasturtium-style wooden skylights housed the kitchens.

The French garden (visible on the terrier plan preserved in the gallery) disappeared in favor of an English garden with the construction of an orangery around 1830.

The Semallé family installed the current chapel (stained glass window dated 1855) in the dungeon (replacing the one built in 1501 by Jean I of the Feugerets). The cartridge pediment with the Semallé coat of arms was moved at the end of the 19th century by the Viscount of Broc and reinstalled on the facade of the right-angled wing built in the middle of the century, while high neo-Renaissance dormer windows were added in facade on the courtyard side.

The Romanet family inherited the château and occupied it throughout the 20th century.

The land of Feugerets will be a rare example of continuity in the lineage of its owners since it will have remained for nearly five centuries in the same family.