Château de Bien Assis

English translation

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History

Feudal dwelling of the 15th century, which has retained period panelled doors and ironwork, as well as fireplaces. The main dwelling comprises two rooms on each storey. On one long side, there is a square tower containing a staircase flanked by a circular turret. Manor presumably built by Colas de Péret, secretary and general treasurer of finances to Duke Jean II of Bourbon, in the last quarter of the 15th century. Having become the property of Gilbert and Estienne Chesauvert, probably through maternal inheritance, in the second quarter of the 16th century, the manor belongs to Pierre Mercier, lord of Barassier and lord of Bien-Assis, around 1580. It remains the property of this family of Montluçon notables until 1763, the year of the death of Marie-Anne Mercier de Bien-Assis. It then becomes the subject of a gift inter vivos to the Tardé de La Vaux and du Mousseaux family. It is transmitted successively by marriage to the families Fourneau de Crébert (1774), Villatte de Peufeilhoux (1796), Alamargot de Villiers and La Saigne de Saint-Georges. Located at the heart of an agricultural operation in the 19th and 20th centuries, it becomes in 1970 the property of the Amis de Montluçon, a society for history and archaeology, which undertakes its restoration and enhancement. [A. Guy, J. Marty et alii, Le château de Bien-Assis, 5th ed., Montluçon, 2017] Noble house of the 15th century, which has retained period panelled doors and ironwork, as well as four fireplaces in Flamboyant Gothic style and a painted ceiling with a trompe l'œil decoration of flowers and interlacing. The main dwelling comprises two rooms on each storey, surmounted by a loft in the roof space. On one long side, oriented to the east, there is a square tower housing a spiral staircase, surmounted by a fire-watch room and flanked by a circular turret giving access to a crenellated terrace arranged beneath the sloping edge of the roof space. A barrel-vaulted cellar, served by a straight-flight staircase, which adjoins a natural spring, extends beneath the entire main dwelling. The staircase was later covered by an oblong room with a brick roof, called a chapel, which flanks the short side of the main dwelling to the north. Two blocks of buildings, forming outbuildings, which extended alongside the main dwelling to the north-east and south-east, as well as the sheepfold and the dovecote in round tower form, located some tens of metres to the west of the main dwelling, were destroyed in 1969. The walls of the hall of the manor, situated on the ground floor, on the south side, are covered with grisaille murals, executed in distemper, dating from the period of the Wars of Religion (between 1575 and 1594) and depicting the cycle of Judith and Holophernes, after the engraved series by Denis de Mathonière, whilst the mantelpiece represents Susanna and the Elders, after the engraved plate by Étienne Delaulne [S. Gibiat, « Les peintures murales du manoir de Bien-Assis à Montluçon », Bulletin monumental, vol. 177-3, 2019, p. 251-265]. On the 1st floor, the exposed joists of the ceiling of a small partitioned room display stencilled rinceaux decoration, whilst fragments of graffiti (maxims ?) are present on a portion of the walls of the neighbouring northern hall.