Origin and history
The present Anglade Castle, built in the 18th century in Izon (Gironde), is the work of architect Victor Louis, famous for the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. Ordered by Jacques Pellet d'Anglade, a Bordeaux merchant enriched in colonial trade, it replaces an ancient medieval castle located 2 km west, today in ruins. The estate, organized in the shape of a U, includes a central house body flanked by pavilions, a chapel, and communes surrounding a court of honor. A 1,500-metre driveway, bordered by two 17th-century guard pavilions, leads to the main entrance.
The old castle of Anglade, dated the 11th century, was a castral motte transformed in the Middle Ages and then in the Renaissance. Located on the edge of the Glaugela marsh, it included an oval motte surrounded by ditches, a square bassyard, and dependencies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A chapel, with a bell tower and a broken gable door, completed the whole. Abandoned after 1830, today only ruins remain. The d'Anglade family, seigneurial since the 13th century, lost and then recovered their lands after fluctuating alliances during the Hundred Years War.
In the 18th century, the Pellet family, enriched in the trade of the "suc islands", acquired the estate in 1738. Jean Pellet, a Bordeaux merchant and shipowner, bought the seigneury for 145,000 pounds and had the new castle built between 1778 and 1788. His son Jacques, guillotined in 1793 during the Revolution, saw the estate confiscated and then bought in 1797 by a homonym, probably his son. The castle, registered with the Historical Monuments in 1965, then moved to the Dufoussat family in the 19th century, which developed a prosperous vineyard thanks to innovative anti-phylloxera techniques.
In the 19th century, Léo Dufoussat, mayor of Izon for 42 years, modernized the estate and operated a 200 hectare vineyard, producing up to 6,000 hectolitres in 1893. The vines, protected from the phylloxera ravages by controlled floods, compensate for the losses of other Bordeaux farms. In the 20th century, the estate declined and was abandoned in 1989. Today, the castle is restored by Christophe Bocquillon, who revives the wine-growing activity, while the entrance pavilions, ceded to the commune, house cultural exhibitions.
The architecture of the château-neuf combines classicism and elegance: symmetrical facades, central advance on the north face, and period woodwork preserved inside. The two guard pavilions, classified in ruins in the 19th century, were restored by the municipality. The family vault of the Pellet, still present, bears witness to the turbulent history of this line, marked by trials, strategic alliances and a tragic end under the Terror. The domain thus illustrates the evolution of Bordeaux elites, from colonial trade to the Earth nobility.
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