Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Luberne mansion, located in Bernières-sur-Mer in Calvados, is an emblematic building built at the end of the 15th century by Henri Thioult on a noble fief. This house, redesigned in the 17th century, combines Gothic and Renaissance influences, with carved dorms, a monumental door decorated with salamanders (signs of François I), and a harmonized south façade. It was the seat of a fief of Bernières and the residence of Protestant families, including the Thioult, who organized a reformed place of worship in the barn from the 16th century.

In 1637 Jacques Moisant de Brieux, a man of letters and founder of the Caen Academy, acquired the mansion and made it an intellectual home. His Protestant family was subjected to post-Revocation persecution of the edict of Nantes (1685), leading François Moisant to abjure. The estate then moved to Touchet (18th century), then to agricultural owners such as the Quesnel (1803). In the 20th century, the farm was separated from the house, while orangery (1660, among the first in France) and bakery remained attached to the mansion. The dovecote, with its 1,700 bolts, illustrates seigneurial prestige.

The manor house, partially listed as a historical monument in 1998, retains remarkable elements: a park enclosed with 17th century walls, an orangery inspired by Versailles, and Renaissance decorations (losanges, acroteries). The farm, converted into a hotel-restaurant, preserved its stables and barn of the sixteenth century, a place of Protestant memory. Recent works (XXI century) have restored the structure of the dovecote, perpetuating the historical heritage of the site.

The history of the mansion reflects the religious and social upheavals of Normandy: Protestant resistance after 1685, the role of local academies in the 17th century, and the transformation of seigneurial estates into farms. The successive families (Thioult, Moisant, Touchet) marked its evolution, between persecutions, abjurations and economic adaptations, until its contemporary heritage valorization.

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