Le château de Bourgon se situe sur la route de Belgeard, commune de Montourtier.
Histoire et architecture
C'est un château du xve siècle. En 600 ans, le château n’a été vendu que deux fois.
En 1406, Jean de Montecler, notable chevalier, acquit la terre de Bourgon, que ses descendants possédèront jusqu'en 1577.
Il a appartenu aux Montmorency au xviie siècle. La salle principale et l’escalier sont du xve siècle, avec une construction de pierres. Les autres pièces ont été rajoutées plus tardivement (sauf le petit salon qui serait une des parties de l'ancien château), et possèdent de remarquables boiseries du xviiie siècle. Le château renferme des pièces très particulières : une bibliothèque garnie des livres de quelques centaines d’années, un chartrier datant de plus de 600 ans où sont conservées les archives du château, la chambre très particulière nommée « le cabinet bleu » de la marquise de Sablé, épouse d’Urbain de Montmorency-Laval, une chapelle datant de 1528 et un pont traversant les anciennes douves, aujourd'hui asséchées.
Certains bâtiments annexes bénéficient d'une inscription au titre des monuments historiques depuis le 29 décembre 1994, alors que le château, le pont dormant et le portail sont classés depuis le 9 août 1996.
Il a été racheté en 2004 par M. et Mme Ducatillon, un couple venant de la région du Nord de la France. La French Heritage Society fit un don en 2009 pour la restauration du château et des travaux importants de toiture sont programmés pour 2010 à 2012, agréés par la Demeure historique.

Château de Bourgon (Mayenne)

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It’s no secret that there have been centuries of tensions between England and France. It all dates back to English kings having ‘possessions’ on the European mainland, as far back as 1066, when William the Conqueror, then Duke of Normandy became King of England.
English kings of England were easily the mightiest of the King of France’s vassals, and the inevitable friction between them frequently escalated into open hostilities. From the time of William The Conqueror, through to the end of the Hundred Years’ War (1337 – 1453), when the English lost the last of their once-wide territories in France, our little part of what is now the department of Mayenne, was in the County of Maine and alternated between British and French control. I suppose we’ve just come back to a land that was once English…(the term ‘county’ was used to draw parallels with all the other English counties on the mainland).
From the 12th to 14th centuries the site of the chateau was in the parish of La Motte and was a fortified stronghold, however, it was not until 1406 that the Husson family, the Seigneurs of Montgiroux, named the castle, Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson.
In 1600, the estate was acquired by the de Baglion family, descendants of the princes of Perugia. The castle was rebuilt in the enclosure of the old square moat during the period 1868-1874. The wealth of the aristocracy at that time is very hard to comprehend, and the de Baglions had numerous parcels of land and grand buildings all over the country. It was Countess Dorothée who told her husband that she wanted a grand chateau on the site of the fort, and she was obviously formidable as she got her own way (a trait common with ladies here, even to the modern day). Interestingly, her main residence was near Nantes, a hundred miles to the South West, and the family decided to spend winters in the milder maritime climate, and summers in the country at Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson. It’s worth remembering that the family didn’t work. They were privileged and consequently occupied living life to the full. They would have travelled, staying in their grand houses and those of their friends, and it would have been the armies of staff that actually lived in the houses, making sure the properties were ready to receive visitors in grandeur, displaying the wealth of the owners.
Prior to us finding Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson, it had been passed down through generations of the de Baglion family. Latterly Guy de Baglion de la Dufferie had received the bare title to it from Xavier Marie Octave, Count de Baglion de la Dufferie and his wife, Elisabeth Marie Joseph Marthe Charlotte Treton de Vaujuas de Langan in 1954, as a part of a dowry. He owned the chateau until his death in 1999, when it passed to his wife and children.
We found the Chateau in October 2014 and purchase was completed January 2015. Our neighbours include members of the de Baglion family, who have been nothing but welcoming and continued to maintain the property even after we had paid our deposit. The family was going to tidy the attic and outbuilding and throw away all the ‘rubbish’. Fortunately we discovered this, in one of our trips to do some measuring, and managed to save treasures that vary from hundreds of pre-WWI magazines to a side-saddle and pieces of Victorian clothing.
Some Interesting Aspects of the Chateau
We are fortunate enough to have the original plans and bills for the rebuild. With the necessary inflation, the bills show that it would cost the best part of £1M to do the same build today. The chateau has numerous features that prove an attention to detail and it was extremely encouraging when excavating the hole for our new sewage system, that we discovered the foundations of the chateau which go down beyond the 3m hole we dug, showing some of the construction of the original castle.
On the first floor, the Madame et Monsieur had suites of individual bedrooms and there was a Salon d’Honeur, which was their meeting place. We wondered if it was purely by chance that the master’s suites had a staircase to the servant’s quarters.
We have an orangery, with which we fell in love when we walked around the property waiting for the estate agent to arrive. Orangeries originated from the Renaissance gardens of Italy, when glass-making technology enabled sufficient expanses of clear glass to be produced. It is basically a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences, of the 17th – 19th centuries, specifically for overwintering orange and other fruit trees. The orangery, however, was not just a greenhouse, it was a symbol of prestige and wealth and a feature of gardens, in the same way summerhouses or follies were included. In the past, owners would conduct their guests on tours of the garden to admire not only the fruits in the orangery, but also the architecture and often the orangery would contain fountains, grottos, and was an area in which to entertain in inclement weather. Ours is relatively simple, but we love it and it was big enough to entertain eighty guests during our wedding breakfast. After many decades of neglect, its citrus trees are thriving again.
https://chateaudelamottehusson.com

Château de la Motte-Husson

Château de Sainte-Suzanne is a castle of the seventeenth century historical monument by decree of 28 December 1984. It was built in the medieval town of Sainte-Suzanne between 1608 and 1610 to 1613 by Guillaume Fouquet de la Varenne and aujourd 'hui property of the county council of Mayenne, it houses since June 2009 architecture and Heritage interpretation Center (CIAP) Country of art and history Coëvrons-Mayenne, and more generally of the department Mayenne.In 1604, Guillaume Fouquet de la Varenne, statesman and minister of Henri IV, bought the first wife of the king, Marguerite of France called "Queen Margot", the ruins of the old fortress to transform the old castle residential home. This project is not completed, since the assassination of King in 1610 gradually brought the downfall of Guillaume Fouquet de la Varenne. It remains this period the house, a beautiful body building in the style of the early seventeenth century.Fouquet La Varenne bought the lordship of Sainte-Suzanne 16 September 1604. All that remains in Sainte-Suzanne "Headphones and bastiments housing and a belt of walls with some twists and mass dungeon-like stones. (. ..) near which said belt of walls and keep estoit petitte a house and a yard called Marye court, and ung small appenty throughout Icelle of (...) in which petitte house remained Estienne Deslandes and his wife Marie Arthuis as janitors, and said patit appenty ferved kitchen and boullangerye ".
http://www.frenchchateau.net/chateaux-of-pays-de-la-loire/chateau-de-sainte-suzanne.html

Château de Sainte-Suzanne

The Château de Lassay is a 15th-century castle in Lassay-les-Châteaux, in the Mayenne department.
History
The first mention of a castrum in Lassay dates back to the 12th century. Owned by Charles de Vendôme at the beginning of the 15th century, the castle is destroyed by French troops since Charles de Vendôme was supporting the English during the Hundred Years War.
In 1458, the French king Charles VII allowed the son of Charles de Vendôme, Jean II, to rebuild a castle. The new castle was achieve within one year. The barbican was built in 1497-1498.
Since then, the castle was left mainly intact and the original 15th-century architecture preserved by the different owners of the castle.
The castle is listed as a Monument historique since 1862. It is open for the visit from April to September.