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Origin and history

The château de l'Herbaudière is located in Salles-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime, in a landscape of meadows halfway between the marshes and the first houses of the village. Its name evokes this particular geographical position, between wetlands and cultivated land. Although the seigneury is not included in the census of the fiefs of the Aunis under François I (1539-1540), a document of 1560 attests to his possession by Pierre Salbert, bishop of La Rochelle, who had acquired it from François Pajault shortly before that date.

The seigneury then passed to the Blandin through the marriage of Élisabeth Salbert with René Blandin, a Protestant family close to Henri de Navarre. Rene Blandin, unlike his family, rejects the Reformed Praxed Religion, as he explains in a 1609 letter. Their eldest son, Pierre Blandin, inherited the estate and passed it on to his descendants until 1680, when their granddaughter, Henriette Blandin, brought in dowry to Louis-Joseph Green de Saint-Marsault, seigneur of Nieul.

In the 18th century, the castle changed hands several times: in 1724 it was ceded to Jean-Pharamond de Sainte-Hermine, Abbé and nephew of the Marquise de Maintenon, and returned to the Greens of Saint-Marsault in 1730. The last seigneur, Henri-Charles-Benjamin Green de Saint-Marsault (1739-1819), greatly expanded the estate after his marriage in 1767. The castle remained in its progeny until the 20th century, before being protected in 1973 for its facades and roofs.

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