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Origin and history

The Logis de la Lèche, located in Touvre in Charente, is a building built between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. It overlooks the Font de la Lèche, one of the sources of the Touvre River, and illustrates the classical architecture adapted to the small rural nobility of the region. Its rectangular plan, its side pavilions and its roof with broken panels in mansard, pierced with adorned skylights, evoke the influences of the neighbouring Périgord. To the west, a chapel (today disused) and, to the east, an old kitchen complete the whole. A five-column covered well and an acroterial gate mark access to the property, closed by retaining walls to the north.

From the 15th century, the site houses a fief belonging to the family of the Ages, lords of the Lèche until the beginning of the 17th century. The estate then passed to Jean Guimard, mayor of Angoulême, who received Louis XIV there. Around 1700, Antoine Debord, adviser to the election of Angoulême, rebuilt the current home before the property was sold to the Deval family in the early eighteenth century. The latter, then the Mathé-Dumaine (by covenant), retained possession of it until 1920. Transformed into a farm after 1950, the house was partially registered with the Historical Monuments in 1994 (facades, roofs, wells and gate).

Interior, formerly composed of large pieces, was redesigned in the 1950s. Although not open to the public, the house offers a remarkable view from the road, with its terrace overlooking the spring and its groves to the south. Its architecture reflects the canons of provincial classicism, mixing seigneurial functionality and sober elegance. The chapel, abandoned at the Revolution, and the commons complete this complex representative of Charentais rural heritage.

Historical sources mention uncertainties on certain dates (purchased by the Devals in 1704 or 1741, construction of the chapel in 1726 or 1760). The house, however, remains a major testimony of local history, linked to noble and bourgeois families that marked the region, from Ages to Deval. Its registration in 1994 underscores its heritage value, despite the transformations of the twentieth century.

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