Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

Le May Mansion, also known as Lemay Mansion or Grand Lemay Mansion, is a Renaissance building built around 1570 in the hamlet of Grand Lemay, 2.3 km northeast of Guéhenno (Morbihan). Built in granite, it was originally used as a hunting lodge for the Lesmais family, local lords with medium and low rights of justice. The estate was located in Porhoët County, and its architecture combines a three-storey house body, a stair turret and a square wing.

The mansion has known several owners over the centuries: Lesmais, Duplessix, Keravéon, Cambout, Montaigu and Coutance families. Falling in ruins in the 20th century, it was used as agricultural storage before its acquisition in 1993 by SIVOM of Saint-Jean-Brévelay. Ranked a historic monument that same year (with its dovecote of the sixteenth century), it was renovated in 2002, but structural problems appeared in 2007. Released in 2017 by the community of municipalities, it marked the abandonment of a project for a heritage interpretation centre.

The dovecote, built outside the seigneurial enclosure in the middle of agricultural land, and the house — an example of architecture of the Second Renaissance — illustrate the typical spatial organization of Breton noble estates. The protected elements include the manor house, the dovecote (classified), as well as the ground right-of-way and a southern longère (registered). Despite its turbulent history, the site remains a testimony of the seigneurial and architectural practices of the late sixteenth century in interior Brittany.

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