A family chateau where a famous novelist lived, tucked away in the beautiful countryside of France's Anjou province - ref 751596
A family chateau where a famous novelist lived, tucked away in the beautiful countryside of France's Anjou province.
The chateau lies just outside a village in a bucolic backdrop. It is five minutes from the town of Segré-en-Anjou Bleu, an administrative centre of France's Maine-et-Loire department. You can reach the city of Angers, with its high-speed rail station, in just 30 minutes by car from the property. And the cities of Nantes and Rennes are only an hour away by car too.
The chateau stands in the shade of age-old trees that tower in English-style grounds. The edifice was recently restored. Its roofing, insulation, electricity, plumbing, windows and sanitation system were renovated. Its 40-metre-long facade stretches from north to south. The chateau has a main section with dual-aspect rooms. This section is framed between a pavilion at its north end and a second pavilion at its south end. Two towers also adjoin it. One of these towers houses a chapel. To the south and west of the dwelling, there are 6,500m² of tree-dotted grounds that are easy to maintain. The property was the family home of the famous French novelist Hervé Bazin. The current owner recreated the atmosphere of Bazin's novel 'Vipère au Poing' here and opened the chateau to visitors. The property has been entirely adapted to comply with norms for France's accreditation for a building to be open to the public. It now resembles a museum and can be used as a business.
The chateauThe edifice dates back to the 17th century. The central section was built during that period. Later, at the start of the 19th century, the edifice was gradually turned into an upper-middle-class dwelling with a pavilion added at the north end and the central section extended. Next, during the belle Ă©poque, the owners created a true chateau by adding a second pavilion at the south end, dormers along the roof, and adjoining towers crowned with pointed polygonal roofs. The elevations are made of white tuffeau stone, punctuated with red bricks. And the roofs are covered with bluish slate tiles that are typical of the local Anjou province.
The ground floor
A wrought-iron canopy, upon which jasmine grows, draws your attention to the entrance door beneath it. This is the main door. You step into a vast hall and an exhibition room with exposed ceiling beams and a floor of polished concrete. On the right, there are the reception rooms, which are typical of the 19th century. The lounge features a monumental fireplace of sculpted wood beneath a trumeau panel of colourful ceramic tiles. There is a French-style beamed ceiling painted with a neo-Renaissance motif. Wood strip flooring extends across the room. The lounge connects to a dining room, where there is also a fireplace and a painted ceiling. This dining room connects to a spacious old-style kitchen with a floor of sandstone slabs. Beyond it there is a hallway with a wooden staircase. Beneath this staircase there is a small utility room. A shower room that complies with norms for people with disabilities and a modern lavatory, made for the museum, could easily be converted and a practical kitchen could be installed.
The first floor
On the first floor of the south pavilion, there are two bedrooms. They have wood strip flooring and grey and white marble fireplaces. An anteroom leads to the central section's roof space, where a long corridor connects to seven rooms and an upstairs chapel - a rare gem. Old stained-glass windows fill this chapel with natural light. The chapel has a wooden altar and is decorated with trompe-l'oil paintwork on the walls. Terracotta tiles cover all the floors. At the end of this level, there is the north pavilion's first floor, which contains an office and a large triple-aspect bedroom with wood strip flooring. A second wooden staircase leads straight down to the ...
