Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The mansion of Rigoulène is mentioned for the first time in the 12th century in the cartular of the Abbey of Aureil as a good of the lords of Noblat, vassals of the bishops of Limoges. This manso, then called Manso Rigolena, remained under their mobility until the end of the 15th century, when it was acquired by Mathieu Dalesme, a merchant and bourgeois of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat. The current construction, probably erected between the 16th and the first quarter of the 17th centuries, preserves traces of this transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The ensemble consists of two parallel building bodies framing an inner courtyard, closed to the east by a gate and to the west by a gallery. A circular tower in the north houses a spiral staircase, while in the south, an old chapel – now transformed into a living room – houses a Renaissance fireplace from Grandmont Abbey, demolished at the end of the 18th century by the architect Brousseau. The latter would have installed this element in the mansion during the work of that period. A room on the ground floor, entirely panelled and painted in the wet (polychrome on a grey background), dates from the 18th century and represents the castle surrounded by a French garden.

In the 19th century, the park was redesigned in English by André Laurent in 1885, partially retaining the charmiles and the original basin. Only a few elements of this transformation remain today. The farm and stables, built at the end of the eighteenth century and in 1880 respectively, complete this set. In 1989, the dining room and its painted decor were classified as Historic Monument, highlighting the heritage value of the panelling and wall paintings.

The mansion thus illustrates several architectural epochs, from medieval vestiges to 18th and 19th century developments, while reflecting the social and economic evolutions of its owners, from feudal lords to bourgeois merchants. Its history is also marked by the re-use of religious elements, such as the Grandmont chimney, a symbol of revolutionary and post-revolutionary upheavals in Limousin.

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