Château de Hauteville

Château de Hauteville, in Hauteville, France, is a French seigneurial residence whose principal rebuilding dates to the late 18th century and which belonged to successive local noble families. Evolving on a manorial estate that belonged to medieval and early modern lords, the site formed part of the local noble landscape and became notable for both its late‑century rebuilding and the violent episodes it suffered during the French Revolution.

The estate originated in the medieval and early modern period under a line of local lords who bore the name Livet. Before 1350 Jean de Livet endowed a rent so he could be buried at Languédias. In the 15th and 16th centuries the house passed through members of the Hauteville family (Jean d’Hauteville in 1407; Gilles d’Hauteville, who died in 1478; Jean II, d. 1501; and Jean III, active in 1508). Jean III founded a chapel dedicated to the Virgin in 1508. In 1526 Lancelotte d’Hauteville brought the domain into the d’Arquenay family by marriage. By 1581 Nicolas d’Angennes was recorded as owner, and from about 1586 the property belonged to the du Hardas family after purchase by Thomas du Hardas.

In the later 18th century Charles du Hardas (1743–1819) commissioned a new château and work began in 1783. By the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 the main structure had been substantially advanced, but economic and social conditions in the province prevented completion. The château remained the focal point of the estate through the Revolution and the century that followed.

The château suffered repeated revolutionary violence. On 31 July 1789 crowds attacked the house, searched the mansion, and burned its cartulary on bonfires. The building was pillaged, and furniture, doors, and windows were sold at low prices. It was threatened again in 1790 and searched repeatedly, notably on 26 June 1791 and 14 July 1793. During the revolutionary period the site was converted for use as a saltpeter production site, and on 27 July 1799 Royalist insurgents known as Chouans removed lead from the building, carrying much of it to nearby Lassay.

Ownership remained within the du Hardas lineage in the 19th century and passed by inheritance to Mélanie Prudhomme de la Boussinière. In 1882 the estate came to Émilie de Pérusse des Cars and Count Bertrand de Montesquiou‑Fézensac; Émilie died at Hauteville in 1901 and Bertrand in 1902, and Bertrand was buried at the chapel of Hauteville in the cemetery of Charchigné. Mathilde de Montesquiou‑Fézensac inherited the property and married Charles‑Marie Widor in 1920.

On 13 November 1922 a fire began in the attics near a central‑heating pipe and spread through the château. Over roughly three weeks the conflagration consumed most of the main house despite firefighting efforts; the blaze was finally halted at the chapel in the left wing, while the right wing was partly preserved. Five people were wounded while fighting the fire and many movable objects and works of art were lost.

After World War II the estate was broken up and its farms were sold individually. Many tenant farmers exercised rights granted under the 1945 tenancy statute (the statute of fermage), becoming long‑term lessees and later purchasing their farms. The estate’s formal double beech avenue was felled in 1961 and a nearby sand quarry later altered the surrounding landscape. In the 1960s the ruined château and its large dependencies passed to Roger Bordelet; his family business passed to Éric Bordelet in 1992. The owners later sought to stabilise and reuse parts of the property, receiving a departmental subsidy in 2013 for a processing and packaging building, and in 2014 they cleared interior spaces and propped openings with the aim of installing cellars, storage and a tasting room in the château and adapting the vaulted cellars for calvados production.