A fortified castle has existed in Malétable since at least the 12th century. The Lordship of Malétable belonged to the Rotrou family. While the appearance is unknown, in 1406, a keep with walls and moats surrounded by a thousand-acre forest, on which hunting rights were exercised was mentioned. At the end of the 13th century, the name Malétable changed to Bonnétable.[1]
Occupied by the English from 1420 to 1422, the château was ruined during the Hundred Years' War.[2]
Château de Bonnétable (près Le Mans), in the Bibliothèque nationale de FrancebyPierre de Coubertin, 1909
In July 1472, King Louis XI authorized Jean d'Harcourt to have his château at Bonnétable reestablished. Construction of the new residence began in 1476 with Mathurin Delandelle as the project manager. When Jean d'Harcourt died in 1487, the unfinished building was completed by his successors.[1]
"It is an old manor house with large turrets, thick walls, and rare and narrow windows; sparsely furnished, not decorated, but solid, clean, and where all kinds of necessities are found, from the chaplain to a basin. [...] In the center of a forest, where six roads lead to a crossroads, there is an immense clearing where the Duchess had a pottery factory built, with all the outbuildings, it is almost a village, which occupies sixty -eight people"
Inc. 1880, the château fell to their grandson, Sosthène II de La Rochefoucauld, 4th Duke of Doudeauville, (a son of Élisabeth-Hélène de Montmorency-Laval and Sosthène I de La Rochefoucauld), and his wife, Princess Marie of Ligne,[9] who commissioned architect Henri Parent to undertake major renovations (as he did for La Rochefoucauld's Château d'Esclimont and Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville in Paris).[10] The building's façades were redecorated in the neo-Gothic style, by drilling of numerous openings, the addition of turrets, bow windows and stoops. For the interiors, the architect hired artisans and painters from Le Mans who created and installed numerous symbols linking to the La Rochefoucauld family history, particularly Melusine, who was called "protector fairy of the castle". In the dining room, the fireplace surround highlighted the motto of the House of La Rochefoucauld, "It's my pleasure", as well as that of the House of Ligne: "Always straight".[11]
In 1908, the dining room was again redecorated with its walls covered with tapestries from the Beauvais Manufactory, while the chapel adjoining the château, decorated in the "Haute Epoque" style, received eleven religious medallions which evoked the eleven patron saints of each of the children of the Duke and Duchess of Doudeauville. Their descendants owned the Château de Bonnetable until the end of the 20th century.
^Art and Letters. Boussard, Valadon & Company. 1889. p. 356. Retrieved 20 June 2024.
^White, William H. (1874). "French Architects in London". The Architect: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Art, Civil Engineering and Building. Gilbert Wood & Company, Limited: 331. Retrieved 20 June 2024.
^France, Touring-club de (1902). Sites Et Monuments (in French). Touring-club de France. p. 96. Retrieved 20 June 2024.
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