Le Château du Péré

The Château du Péré is not the noble residence of an ancient seigneury, but rather a large mansion built in the early 20th century, around 1910, based on plans by Georges Naud, an architect from Saintes. This residence stands at the centre of an estate that belonged, in the first half of the 19th century, to Joseph Baudry, who left it to his daughter Jeanne-Eustelle, wife of Augustin Savary, president of the civil court of Saintes. In the mid-19th century, in 1850, it passed to his descendant, Auguste-Eugène Savary, imperial prosecutor at the civil court of Saintes, who sold it in 1854 to Élisée-Laurent Vieuille, a resident of Rochefort. The Napoleonic cadastral map of 1828 mentions the original buildings. It was a complex consisting of three buildings with a mansion between the courtyard and the garden. These various buildings were demolished to make way for the current residence, the plans for which were presented in 1911 under the name "Manoir de Préville près de Saintes" at the French craftsmen's fair, then published in the magazine "La construction moderne ". Hidden away in the middle of a wooded park and far from the main transport routes, the Péré residence is built on a natural terrace overlooking a pond. Built of cut stone, it has a ground floor, a square first floor and an attic floor. Constructed in double depth, it has two façades decorated with neo-Renaissance elements, such as the two towers attached to the east and west sides, the mullioned windows and the triangular pediment dormers on the roof. Accessible via a staircase in one of the adjoining towers, the building is extended by a short, single-storey wing covered by a roof terrace hidden behind a crenellated parapet (a wall designed to prevent falls). Like the main building, this small wing has a cylindrical tower. To the south of the property is a rubble stone wall containing a stone staircase leading down to a garden with a fishpond.