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Origin and history

Nanteuil Castle, located in Huisseau-sur-Cosson in the Loir-et-Cher, is a private monument whose seigneurial origins date back to at least the twelfth century. A document from 1749 evokes Geoffroi Barbelle, lord of Nanteuil around 1151, but it was especially from the 16th century that the Courtin family, squires and advisers of the king, marked the history of the estate. These lords, such as Jean Courtin (1577-1626) or Jacques Courtin (maintained noble in 1667), retained the title until the eighteenth century, before the goods were seized in 1738.

In the 18th century, the present castle was built on older foundations, on the edge of the Cosson, and later modified in the 19th century. He passed into the hands of several families, including the Chevalier, who sold him to Laurent Lefèvre in 1810. In the 19th century, it was successively owned by the Marquis de Broc, Baron Hamelin, and the Counts of Belot. In 1921, the Englishman William Gardnor-Beard made him a welcoming place for students, before Bernard's couple, resisting during the Second World War, was arrested in 1943 for their engagement in the Buckmaster network.

During the war, the castle was occupied by the Germans, while Count Pierre de Bernard and his wife, deported to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, returned in 1945 to resume their educational activities until 1968. General de Gaulle made a private visit there in 1949. Architecturally, the castle includes a two-storey house body, an east pavilion, and a stone cooler. Restored in 1975, it preserves traces of its transformations throughout the centuries, visible on plans of the eighteenth, nineteenth and Napoleonic cadastre of 1827.

The entrance to the castle, framed with columns and surmounted by a triangular pediment, reflects its classic style. The site, which also includes stables, bears witness to its evolution from a medieval seigneury to an aristocratic residence, then a place marked by the history of the Resistance. Countess Anne-Marie de Bernard, appointed knight of the Legion of Honour in 1955, embodies this dual memory, both cultural and heroic.

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