Château de Troussay

English translation

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History

The château de Troussay is situated in the commune of Cheverny, at the boundary of Sologne and Blésois, in the canton of Contres, 15 km south of Blois and 3 km west of Cheverny. Built, with its outbuildings, on a regular quadrilateral, probably a former ditched platform, this modest seigneurial residence adopts the traditional arrangement of a small Sologne château of the late Middle Ages. The three buildings, main dwelling and outbuildings, are arranged in a U-shape around a courtyard closed on the south by a low wall. The main dwelling is placed at the far end of the courtyard. Probably built in the 15th century, taken up again in the Renaissance for a squire, controller of the salt granary of Blois, this manor was extensively restored between 1850 and 1873 by the departmental architect Jules de La Morandière, Duban's successor in Blois, for the historian, archaeologist and collector, Louis de La Saussaye. It is in this reconstruction conceived and directed by an eminent figure of the Blésois region that the interest of Troussay today lies. Louis de La Saussaye belonged to that movement of opinion which, after the Revolution and the destruction it caused, led to the creation of major learned societies and a drive for the conservation of heritage. He was one of the eminent antiquaries of that eclectic generation, a self-taught enthusiast for medieval history and nascent archaeology. This collector was correspondent of Mérimée for the first Commission of Historic Monuments. His presence on the restoration site of the château de Blois, where he was the intellectual sponsor of Duban, had a very concrete influence on the reconstruction of Troussay. It was in the architecture and decoration of the castle of Louis XII and Francis I that La Saussaye found the models of inspiration for the reconstruction of his house undertaken at the same time. It was on this major building site that he recruited the artists who translated his ideas. Following an approach inherited from figures such as the abbé Grégoire during the Revolution and Alexandre Lenoir at the beginning of the 19th century, Louis de la Saussaye saved from destruction many works of art and fragments of architecture, some of very high quality, which he had reassembled at Troussay: civil stained glass of the 16th century, attributed to the former Guise and Sardini hotels in Blois, Gothic and Renaissance joinery from windows of houses demolished during major road works, sculpture from the Hôtel Hurault de Cheverny in the same city, capital and door (one of the most remarkable examples of Renaissance woodcarving) from the famous chapel of the château d'Onzain and perhaps by extension from the château de Bury, a building whose role was capital in the history of the first French Renaissance. The architectural value of the joint work of La Saussaye and La Morandière is modest. The architecture, although carefully executed, appears ordinary. But the originality and interest reside in the thought that presided over the restoration of Troussay. The principle of this restoration directed by La Saussaye is explained in his manuscript work, the Annales troussayennes: to renew the old manor while preserving its character, respecting the witnesses to its history, but embellishing it further. This resulted in a reinvented château where Gothic and Renaissance styles are reconstituted. The new château de Troussay is the architectural creation of a learned collector who, despite the stated doctrine of respecting as far as possible the ancient state, reveals the very characteristic taste of the mid-19th century which sought to recreate an atmosphere rather than authenticity. It is also a witness to the part taken by the scholar in the restoration of the château de Blois, an essential building site of the 19th-century architectural agenda.