Chambre d'hôtes de charme au Château de l'Epinay en Anjou en bord de Loire

A place of history

Within its framework of greenery, it remains a remarkable history which dates back to the thirteenth century and may be the year one thousand for the first fortifications.
However, the main part of the building dates from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Currently, the castle has a facade with lattice windows, dormers surmounted with pinnacles and hooks. Beautiful gargoyles which one is decorated with a cow's head, which punctuate the facade sculptures were left unfinished at the latest changes in the nineteenth century. The main building is wedged between two towers, one fled the thirteenth century and a square tower of the fifteenth. The leaked would actually be a tower of the old fortifications, converted into loft and covered the XVII a dome skylight reminiscent Gases.

The lantern itself is topped by a surprising spike lead back to over a meter and adorned with a beautiful pigeon and three acanthus leaves. The loft law, a privilege granted by the king to fiefs high justices, comprised 400 holes putlog and a ladder pivoting on a central axis allowed to harvest and clean the droppings as fertilizer. Each hole putlog corresponded to a number of acres of land. This pigeon was therefore right depending on the size of the area and therefore highly prized as a mark of prestige outside. The main facade leaves no suspect at the back of the castle on the opposite side of the courtyard stands a stately home of the XV charm reminiscent of some manors Breton, mixing in shale and tuff. It retains a square tower housing a beautiful spiral staircase. Major work in the seventeenth century lasted this home on the south by a long building with large windows and door pediments in the image of the facade of the abbey of Saint-Georges. Faced with this stately home of the fifteenth and sixteenth century still stand the remains of the medieval fortress: high wall with battlements of a ruined gatehouse square that gave access to the courtyard of the house.

The moat surrounding the fortress have certainly been filled, but there are still traces of the defense system down to the feedings. In addition, the tunnel that opens at the foot of the dovecote was probably part of this defensive structure; hypothesis seems more likely than a subway leading to the abbey as the legend says. But the reader is allowed to dream!
Large Families

Large families have owned Angevin stronghold of Epinay. For Gastinel, founders of the twelfth century stronghold successor to the Montalais Vern XV and XVI, the La Jaille in 1451, the Brie-Hugging, d'Andigne. At the end of the sixteenth earth passes by marriage to the family of Andigne which will retain the fee until 1730, when the Cumont become owners. A descendant of this family, Arthur de Cumont who inherited the property in 1874, was Minister of Public Instruction. In our time, the feud was long the property of Mr. Gasiorowski then mayor of St. George. The castle bought in 1988 by the former owner when he had suffered long years of neglect and he led.

The fee also raises one of the most prestigious names in French literature Jean Racine, whose memory is curiously associated with the history of Epinay and more particularly to the Priory by the trial between Le Ferron for obtaining that office in 1666 following the resignation of his uncle Antoine Sconin, canon of Uzes and the Prior of Epinay. After 3 years of litigation, Racine relinquish the title of the Prior of Epinay and keep the echo of the baffles in the only comedy he wrote: "The Litigants ':' chicane is a language foreign to me anymore that person and I have used some words that I can have barbarians learned in the trial court that neither judges nor my course, I never. " The Countess of Pimbeche this popular comedy must therefore its existence to a disputed title Prieur de L'Epinay, whose root is in state yet the privilege of "Andromache" in 1667.

A place of history

Large Families