Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The domain of Montreuil, former seigneury attested in 1564, passed into the hands of noble families through successive alliances. Jean Godelin owned it in 1564, followed by Jean de Cornulier in 1612, who made it his residence until 1756. A second castle, built at the beginning of the 18th century (dated 1704 engraved on the commons), was replaced in the 19th century for undetermined reasons. Today, only the communes of this castle remain in the form of a farm.

In 1756, the Boux family acquired the estate by marriage, then in 1793 it fell to the family of Monti de Rezé, still through a matrimonial alliance. In 1833, Constant Antoine du Bois de Maquillé, page of Charles X and mayor of Nozay, became its owner after his union with Euphrasie de Monti de Rezé. Although the 1704 castle was still standing on that date (visible on the cadastre of 1833 and a lithography of Félix Benoist around 1850), Constant Antoine decided, in the second half of the 19th century, to build a new castle 300 meters northeast.

The third and present castle, of neo-Renaissance style, was built between 1882 and the 1890s by the Dutch architect Marie-Louis Liberge, for the son of Constant Antoine, Constant Marie du Bois de Maquillé, and his wife Marie Gabrielle de La Gonnivière. The park is designed by the Parisian landscape architect J. Chevalier. The castle, adorned with family coats of arms and a motto ("God with whom against"), remains in the family until 2015, the date of its first sale since 1564. The chapel houses armored stained glass windows celebrating family alliances.

The estate remained inhabited by the descendants until 1977, when Count Constant Joseph Antoine du Bois de Maquillé, the last permanent occupant, died. Her daughter Evelyne, and then her granddaughters, inherited it before selling it in 2015, ending almost five centuries of uninterrupted family transmission. No information explains why the 1704 castle was abandoned in favour of a new construction.

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