Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de l'Oiserie, located in La Couronne near Angoulême, finds its origins in the 15th century on a domain originally linked to a falconry dependent on the Abbey of Notre-Dame de la Couronne. Its construction began in 1498 under the impulse of Arnauld Calluaud, an alderman of Angoulême, with a gothic wing adorned with gargoyles and a square turret housing a spiral staircase. This project is in the context of the Renaissance, under the reign of Louise de Savoie, the mother of Francis I, who will even stay at the castle in 1526 after his captivity in Spain, where he will be injured during a hunt.

Jean Calluaud, son of Arnauld and bishop of Senlis, enlarged the castle in the 16th century by adding a house and a round tower. However, financial conflicts with the abbey of La Couronne forced him to sell the estate in 1678 to Jean de Tiers, then in 1691 to François Maunde, whose family kept it for two centuries. The architecture evolves with the addition of a gallery around 1600 and interior fittings in the 18th century to modernize comfort, reflecting the tastes of the era.

In the 20th century, the castle changed its vocation: it hosted an agricultural school as early as 1902, which had since become an agricultural high school and a teaching documentation centre. Ranked a historic monument in 1911 for its building (towers, crenellated gates, sundial) and its garden (fontaines, dovecote, basins), it is now owned by the Charente department. Its park, divided between garden and garden, preserves traces of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as ditches and access stairs.

The site thus illustrates several epochs: the Renaissance with its Gothic elements, the Old Regime with its architectural transformations, and the 19th to 20th centuries with its educational conversion. The successive protections (1911 for the castle, 1992 for the gardens) underline its heritage value, combining local history, aristocratic art of living and educational heritage.

Future

It now houses the Oisellery Agricultural High School and the Departmental Educational Documentation Centre.

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