Moulin d'Henri IV (également sur commune de Barbaste)

English translation

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History

Built shortly before 1308, this fortified flour mill became the property of the house of Albret and, subsequently, of Henri IV. Located slightly upstream of the bridge with nine arches, over which the Ténarèze passed, the building was used as a toll château. Of square plan measuring 15 m per side, it is flanked at the angles by four square crenellated towers of unequal heights (29 m for the highest). More fortress than mill in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Moulin des Tours was bought back in the early 19th century by MM. Aunac and Rémy, bankers in Agen, who had the Maison Aunac built in 1821, a superb three-storey dwelling with round-arch openings on the ground floor and a gallery on the storey giving onto the river. The ensemble was acquired in 1848 and enlarged by a vast commercial warehouse by Antonin Bransoulié, who modernized the flour production installations intended for export to the West Indies. Between 1864 and 1880, the society of the mills of Henri IV, directed by Edmond Caupenne, experienced flourishing activity which subsequently slowed and ceased definitively in 1905. Between 1940 and 1960, the Moulin des Tours housed a cork agglomerate factory.