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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de Montertreau, located in Parigne-le-Pôlin in the Sarthe, is built in the 19th century on the bases of a much older property, attested from the 17th century. In 1800 Josephine-Rose de la Thébaudière, a twenty-year-old woman, acquired the estate before marrying Charles Lepaige, nephew of a local author, in 1802. The Lepaige family, wishing to modernize its residence, had in 1844 built a new house perpendicular to the old castle, which would eventually be destroyed in the early twentieth century. Upon the death of Amélie Lepaige without an heir in 1875, the estate was sold to Alfred Pellier, a sarthoese industrialist and passionate botanist, awarded for his work on clematites and ferns.

Alfred Pellier, a member of the Société centrale d ́horticulture de France, entrusted in 1877 the redefinition of the park to Édouard André, a renowned landscaper with whom he frequently collaborated. Their partnership gives rise to a model garden, celebrated by André himself, integrating exotic species such as redwoods, ginkgos or cedars. Pellier died in 1879, but his legacy continued: the park, classified in 1946 to protect him from the requisitions of wood, and the castle, partially listed as historical monuments in 2011 and 2012, retained their original character, enriched in the 1930s by Art-Deco mosaics commissioned by the Decoux family.

The architecture of the castle, work by Pierre-Félix Delarue around 1840, discreetly blends neo-Gothic elements (lucarns, turrets) with a modest structure of three spans on two levels. Located on a hillside, it dominates the Belinois plain, while its park, conceived as a landscape extension of the building, illustrates the harmony between nature and construction. The estate, now protected, bears witness to both the evolution of architectural tastes in the 19th century and the importance of landscaped gardens in French heritage.

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