Manoir d'Epeisse

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

The fortified house of Epeisse is situated on the slope of a hillside, dominating the village of Cogny from the west. It formerly formed part of a larger enclosed estate and was devoted until recently to viticulture. The land of Epeisses is mentioned for the first time in 1286. The fortified house is the cradle of an eponymous seigneurial lineage attested from the 12th century. It was dependent on the Beaujolais castellany of Montmelas. In the 13th century, the seigneury passed into the hands of the Chameyré family. In the 15th century, it belonged to the Namy, a family of Beaujolais notables. The Namy lineage fell into abeyance in the second half of the 17th century. Jeanne de la Forêt, widow of an alderman of Villefranche, François Tournier, who had owned since 1651 the neighbouring estate of la Lucardière, bought the fortified house and its dependencies in 1693. The sale deed describes Epeisses as a domain and fief consisting of vineyards and a house with a cellar, a storage room, a stable, a vat-room housing two vats and a press, a courtyard and a garden. In 1688, Jeanne-Françoise Tournier had married Pierre de Phélines whose arms are still visible on the mantelpiece of a fireplace. In 1702, the property was further enlarged. At the end of the 17th century, the domain centre was at la Lucardière which had been rebuilt. The fortified house of Epeisses was reduced to a simple agricultural dependency where wine-growers were housed. By inheritance, the domain passed in 1728 to Nicolas Deschamps. Put up for sale in 1758, it then consisted of several rooms for wine-grower households, a cellar, a storage room, a fruit store, a tower, a turret, a dovecote, stables, a hay barn and a grain loft. It was purchased by François Morel, counsellor to the court of the mint of Lyon. During the Revolution, his son, François Morel de Rambion, was arrested and then released two months later. On 11 August 1793, the municipal council of Cogny solemnly burned the archives of the seigneury of Epeisses. These consisted of six terriers from the 15th century, six others more recent and "five pounds weight of old papers". Only one terrier from the 16th century survives in the departmental archives, which was not located at Epeisses. Louis-Joseph-Irénée Morel de Voleine (1856-1936) was the owner of the fortified house. This historian wrote a history of the fief, published in 1903 in the Bulletin of the Society of Sciences and Arts of Beaujolais.

Description

The manor of Epeisse presents itself in the form of a rectangular plan embellished with a large round tower to the north-east, it presents only an area of approximately 700 m² on the ground, a surface from which must be deducted the area of two courtyards and outbuildings. The old main dwelling, composed of the east wing originally and extended in the north wing as far as the dovecote, forms only a small area of approximately 200 m² on the ground. The manor is therefore a very small specimen of fortified house with compact buildings organized around a courtyard.