Château de Thérac

English translation

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History

Castle of medieval origin that belonged to the bishops of Saintes, rebuilt in the Renaissance (entrance gatehouse of the 15th-16th century, intact in its architecture as well as its carpentry). A few elements added in the 17th century, including the barn. In 1791, the estate was sold as national property. The building consisted of two enclosures separated by a deep flooded moat. The south-west enclosure was both a service court and an entrance court. It retains a gatehouse with two cylindrical pepper-pot towers, fitted with arrow slits-gun embrasures and gun ports. The central passage, in a round arch, is defended vertically by a machicolation with moulded corbels and a fighting gallery, closed on the court side by an original wooden railing, with posts and St Andrew's crosses. The court is now narrow because of the construction, in the 19th century, of outbuildings and dwellings. A vast barn, perhaps from the 17th century, forms at the same time an enclosure wall to the west. It is covered with a roof structure of rafters bearing trusses and bracing in St Andrew's crosses. The second enclosure contained the courtyard and the main dwelling, entirely disappeared. Two remnants of the curtain wall remain. To the north remnant is attached a large house from the late 18th century, decorated with pilasters and bands on the façade. The second remnant, to the south, is accompanied by a building that may have been a chapel.