Photo : rosier / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Château de Montchaude
The Montchaude estate, in the Charente, belonged to lords of the house of Barbezieux, then to the Saint-Gelais family. Arnaud de Montchaude is mentioned in the cartulary of Baignes around 1075. The château is thought by some to have been built in the mid-16th century by the Bouchard family, by others at the end of the 16th century for the Saint-Gelais, perhaps by Antoine Fontan, architect of La Rochefoucauld. It was then surrounded by moats.
The Saint-Gelais family kept Montchaude until 1732. In 1889 Louis-Eugène Arnous, member of parliament for Barbezieux, bought it and had it extensively remodelled by the architects Édouard Warin and Raymond Barbaud. The château has a main building flanked by two pavilions, under a slate mansard roof raised in the 19th century, with dormers richly decorated with floral motifs, arabesques and coats of arms. It has a terrace, a garden and a park, with a large round dovecote set apart.
