Domaine de Beaulieu

English translation

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History

The Château de Beaulieu, off-centre to the south of the town, was formerly named Château de Trédo, not far from a hamlet of the same name. In the Middle Ages, Morancé is known to have been part of the holdings of the abbey of the Sisters of Saint-Pierre de Lyon. In 1245, the religious sisters had a priory built. Little information circulates in the bibliography concerning the fief of Beaulieu, which does not appear clearly until the end of the Middle Ages, centred around a château-fort. The lords of Beaulieu were then the de Chiel, a very ancient family of the Dombes and Bugey regions; their arms can be found on a vault key of the tower. The fief subsequently passed to the Hindret until the beginning of the 18th century. In 1741, the domain was sold to Pierre de Chaponay. Guillaume-Marie Delorme (1700-1782), a Lyonnais architect, carried out work, in particular the development of the western part of the garden in 1774. The family remained the proprietor after the Revolution and restored the château; Count Pierre-Anne de Chaponay had married, in 1795, Marie-Antoinette Durand de Chatillon. The couple is said to have requested intervention on the château from the architect Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), who had just restored the Fléchère at Saint-Vérand. The reconstruction of the towers and the restoration of the East building most probably arose from this vast campaign of works. They also commissioned the construction of the chapel situated in the western part of the park, between 1833 and 1841. Claude-Anthelme Benoît (1794-1876) was its architect and numerous contracts and invoices are preserved in the departmental archives. The Countess Marie-Antoinette de Chaponay devoted all her energy to overseeing the construction of this chapel and to maintaining the vast château. It is difficult to know whether she or her granddaughter participated in the development of a décor. In 1883, Valentine de Chaponay and her husband Léon de Biencourt sold Beaulieu to the De Champ family with the exception of the chapel. In 1946, the Regional Social Security Fund of Lyon purchased the domain and converted the château into a preventorium. Closed since 2013, the care centre was owned by UGECAM before its sale to the commune (through EPORA).

Description

The domain is centred around a vast main dwelling formed on the one hand by the former Château du Trédo, some ancient architectural elements of which are still visible (the mansard-roofed buildings still equipped with round towers adorned with decorative crenellations in the 19th century) and on the other hand by the 18th-century château which retains a remarkable grand staircase and a decorated room (paintings, painted woodwork, painted panels from the 17th century). To the north, outbuildings of exceptional size are centred in a U-shape around a basin. A small octagonal dovecote, kennels on the ground floor, is representative of the architectural fashion in the mid-19th century in this type of private domain. In the western part are two entrance buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries, a family chapel of the Chaponays, in alarming sanitary condition but of exceptional stereotomy, set within a formal garden which still outlines itself in encroaching vegetation. In the eastern part, a landscaped garden and its hydraulic installations are delimited by two tree-lined avenues with ancient species forming a heart and leading to two pavilions at the eastern entrance; the craftsmanship of these two pavilions is that of the mansard-roofed part of the main dwelling. The domain is enclosed by walls.