Château Desandrouin et son parc incluant le temple dit de l’Amour

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 castle and its park adorned with picturesque elements (the most remarkable of which is the temple called the Temple of Love) originates from the Desandrouin family, who operated glassworks in Belgium and in France. Seeking an alternative to wood as fuel for the furnaces of their glassworks created in 1710, they were at the origin of the discovery of coal at Fresnes in 1720. This was a matter of conserving available resources but also of avoiding the customs duties put in place after the territory's attachment to France, which discouraged the importation of Belgian coal. It appears that the castle was built around 1770 next to the glassworks for Stanislas Desandrouin. The substantial revenues from mining operations allowed him luxurious improvements, including heated greenhouses and a picturesque park with follies. In 1810 the walls and buildings of the kitchen garden were erected: an orangery, a gardener's house, a dovecote. Stanislas Desandrouin married in 1806 Louise-Joséphine Chalgrin, whose father is the architect Jean-François Chalgrin, to whom is attributed without proof the construction of the Temple of Love. Stanislas Desandrouin died in 1821, and his wife in 1828. The glassworks and the castle with its park and outbuildings passed to Emile Moreau-Saugrain, son of a first marriage of Louise-Joséphine Chalgrin. But he died in 1833, leaving a minor daughter, and the estate was sold and partly divided up. The castle, which found no buyer, was partly demolished. It was reconstructed in 1834 incorporating two surviving pavilions. It has the particularity of a façade in cast cement, rare for this date and for this type of building. The estate and glassworks then passed into the hands of the Renard family, who redesigned the garden as an English-style park taking advantage of the water supply from the Escaut. They sold the castle in 1907 to M. Paul Wagret, also a glassmaker. In 1913 the glassworks ceased operations and he sold the castle to the Société houillère de Thivencelles, who made it the residence of its directors. Then with the nationalisation law of the coal mines of 1946, the castle fell into the hands of the Houillères nationales. It was ceded to the town in 1958. The town made the park into a public garden and installed various activities in the castle (domestic science school, music school, club for the elderly, ...), which contributed to the disappearance of old interior elements. The outbuildings and perimeter wall were destroyed in the early 1970s. This ensemble thus testifies to the importance of Fresnes-sur-Escaut in the coal basin. It illustrates the connection between the development of industry (here glassmaking) and the extraction of coal, under the impetus of great families affected by customs duties following the integration of the territory into France. After the extinction of the Desandrouin family, this history intertwining coal and glass lasted until the cession of the estate by the coal companies in 1958. It is an interesting example of a castle with a cast cement façade, still surrounded by its landscaped park redesigned in the mid-19th century in the English style, whose centrepiece is the Temple of Love, a type of folly extremely rare in the region, and of great quality despite its uncertain attribution. This temple of love was built in 1762 on the occasion of the marriage of the Marquis Gédéon Desandrouins, founder of the first glassworks at Fresnes, with Caroline de Walkiers. This small circular building supported by eight Doric columns has two replicas in France, at the Petit Trianon at Versailles and at Parc Monceau in Paris. It is attributed to Jean-François Chalgrin (1739-1811), architect of the church of Saint-Philippe du Roule and author of one of the plans for the Parisian Arc de Triomphe.