A fun and friendly visit to Baume de Bouteville

On the agenda

From the middle of the 9th century, the first Counts of Angoulême had fortified this hill to integrate it into the network of fortified towns that defended the county against the Vikings.
At the beginning of the 11th century, the castle, then the property of the Lord of Archiac, came back under the control of the Counts of Angoulême through the marriage of Geoffroy Taillefer and Pétronille d’Archiac. The Taillefer family made it one of their residences. Pétronille and Geoffroy then founded the Saint Paul priory which was donated in 1029 to the Savigny abbey in the diocese of Lyon. Bouteville became the starting point of a collection of possessions in Savigny en Saintonge and the reference point in the development of the nascent Romanesque art.

In 1176, the castle was one of the many strongholds handed over to the King of England, Richard the Lionheart. During the Hundred Years’ War, Jean Sans Terre and the Black Prince often stayed in Bouteville. The castle was definitively taken over and razed to the ground by the French in 1392. It was Jean d’Orléans, Count of Angoulême and grandfather of François I, who completed the reconstruction of the castle. In the middle of the 16th century, in spite of a short ten-year presence, the Montmorency family left their mark by taking the patronymic of Montmorency-Bouteville. But the wars of religion would once again ruin the fortress.

At the instigation of Henry IV and Sully, Bernard de Béon du Masses and his wife Louise de Luxembourg replaced the ruined medieval fortress with the present castle in a pseudo-Renaissance style. Construction lasted from 1594 to 1624. In the 18th century, Henri de Hautefort took possession of the seigneury and modernised the castle.

But on the eve of the revolution, already in poor condition, the castle fell into the hands of the Count of Artois, the future Charles X. He took possession of it in 1788 and after his exile, the estate was sold in 1803 as a national asset. This marked the beginning of a long period of decadence during which the most beautiful stones were sold and embellished the Château de Bourg Charente.

The church and its 14th century paintings were added to the supplementary list of historical monuments in 1965. The castle was classified as a historical monument in 1984 and sold to the commune in 1994.