Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de la Cheyrelle, located in Dienne (Cantal) at 1,100 m above sea level, is a mansion built from 1858 on the foundations of a medieval barn. Auguste Felgères, postmaster at Murat, laid the first stone to make it a country castel. Agricultural activity continued until the 1990s, marking its rural and functional anchor for more than a century.

Between 1903 and 1905, Pierre Felgères, mayor of Dienne and coulissier parisienne, entrusted his transformation to architect René Dulong and Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, major figure of Art Nouveau. They apply their visionary principles (clarity, rationality, functionalism), inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement. The ensemble, including commons, guardhouse and park of 1,7 hectares, becomes a unique architectural manifesto, still intact today.

The property remained in the Felgères family until 1989, with a continued agricultural activity, including the breeding of Salers cows revived by Jacqueline Felgères-Trillat (Agricultural Merit Award in 1967). Her husband, physicist Jean-Jacques Trillat, played a discreet but historic role in 1940, participating in the evacuation of heavy water from the Joliot Curie laboratory to Riom during the Second World War.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 2006 for its "exceptional interest" as a complete work by Serraurier-Bovy, the castle was bought in 1990 by Parisian individuals and then in 2014. Since 2017, a restoration campaign allows it to reopen its visits in 2024, after decades of meticulous preservation of its interior and exterior decor.

The architecture of the castle consists of two main buildings: the original "Château" (1858-1868) and the "New House" (1904) housing commons and service rooms. The park offers a remarkable view of the Santoire valley and the Limon plateau. The medieval barn, the last agricultural vestige, was demolished in 2006 before the final classification.

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