Château de Chantepie

The Château de Chantepie stands on the bank of the River Mayenne, about 1.5 km north-east of the village centre of Thubœuf. The seigneurie is documented from 1278, when Pierre de Chantepie is named as lord; it depended on the châtellenie of Lassay. In 1430 it passed to the de Pennard family through the marriage of Jeanne de Chantepie to Guillaume de Pennard. In 1774 Anne-Françoise de Pennard married the Marquis Louis de Vaufleury de Malterre. Through Arlette de Vaufleury de Malterre, who married Charles Law de Lauriston in 1920, the estate has remained in the Law de Lauriston family to the present day. No visible remains of the medieval structure survive; only a reused lintel with coat of arms points to the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The present building was largely created in the late eighteenth century (pavilion dated 1779) and was substantially extended and remodelled in the second half of the nineteenth century: the western pavilion was rebuilt in 1855–1865, the eastern pavilion raised, dormers renewed, the chapel remodelled in neo-Gothic style and fitted with stained glass by Antoine Lusson (1859). Further additions and the raising of the central section followed around 1890. In 1902 the cour d’honneur received a wrought-iron gate by Girard of Couterne.

The château is an elongated rectangular building oriented east–west, with two lateral pavilions and a projecting central risalit in the style of the seventeenth century (Néo-XVIIe). It stands between a cour d’honneur with service wings and a garden bounded by a diversion canal of the Mayenne. The façades and roofs of the château and its outbuildings were inscribed as a monument historique on 29 December 1986. The property is in the private ownership of the Law de Lauriston family and serves as a residence. It is generally not open to the public but is occasionally accessible during the Journées du Patrimoine.