Château Malleret: A Neoclassical Estate on the Garonne
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.9
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page17 sections
History
Château Malleret is a Neoclassical estate in Cadaujac, France, on the left bank of the Garonne. Its surviving central building is associated stylistically with the mid-eighteenth century, although the exact date of its initial construction is unknown. The estate began as a private property and remains a private residence.
The Malleret estate
Guillaume Malleret, an advocate at the Parliament of Bordeaux, purchased the estate on 24 September 1700. The locality later appeared as Maleret in the eighteenth century and was marked on the Cassini map. Malleret commissioned a château, and the estate’s vineyards produced approximately 40 to 50 barrels of palus wine, made from grapes grown on the low-lying alluvial or marshland soils along the Garonne and other Bordeaux rivers.
The Arman-Courau transformation
In 1839, the estate passed through the marriage of Laure Caillavet to Lucien Arman, also known as Arman-Courau. He belonged to Bordeaux’s ship-owning Courau and Arman families. In 1860, Arman-Courau enlarged the original château and created the park and its associated features.
Lucien Arman-Courau was a friend of Napoleon III, emperor of the Second French Empire from 1852 to 1870. Napoleon III, who had earlier been known as Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, stayed at Malleret several times and traveled there from Bordeaux by steamboat. A private landing stage gave direct access to the property. The origin of their friendship is uncertain, although local tradition connected it with Louis-Napoleon’s imprisonment at Ham Castle between 1840 and 1846.
The Arman and Courau shipyards failed in 1868. Financially ruined, Lucien Arman placed the château on the market in 1869.
Later ownership and restoration
M. Berthias acquired Château Malleret in 1933. He obtained wrought-iron gates from Place Gambetta in Bordeaux and installed them beside the Garonne. He also created a modern dairy farm and sold its milk under the name “Le lait vivant.” Later owners allowed the château, outbuildings, and gardens to deteriorate during a period of family conflict and neglect.
Since 1986, the current owners have restored the château, its outbuildings, and its gardens, recovering the appearance of the estate. Château Malleret was entered on the register of historic monuments in 1989.
Remains
Château Malleret occupies a riverside estate reached by a long private avenue. The surviving buildings and designed grounds combine an eighteenth-century central residence with nineteenth-century additions, formal gardens, service buildings, and ornamental structures arranged around the property.
The château
Central residence and pavilions
The central part of the château dates from the eighteenth century. Its raised residential block has one upper storey and a Mansard roof, which has two slopes on each side, with the lower slope steeper and often suitable for additional usable space. Lateral sections end in elegant pavilions that turn at right angles toward the Garonne. Some of their ornaments repeat those of the central pavilion.
River façade and western pavilion
On the river side, a turning staircase with two flights converging as they rise leads to the grand salon. A fountain stands beneath it. The staircase balustrades echo the roof balusters decorating the two lateral sections. The western pavilion has two round towers framing a small projecting bow-window, which supports a terrace enclosed by balusters.
Interiors and recovered lions
The first-floor reception rooms are furnished as a succession of cabinets of curiosities, rooms displaying varied natural, artistic, historical, and scientific objects for study and contemplation. Two terracotta lions made for the original château once stood on the plinths of the old entrance gate. After they were stolen, they were recovered in an antiques dealer’s exhibition room in Paris and returned to Malleret. They were later placed between the château and the Garonne for protection.
Gardens and landscaped grounds
French formal garden
In front of the eastern façade, facing the Garonne, lies a French formal garden, a geometrically ordered design based on symmetry, controlled planting, paths, and basins. Its basin contains a marble bowl decorated with lion heads, and a fountain forms another feature of the garden.
Kitchen garden and literary promenade
A kitchen garden and orchard occupy the southeast of the grounds. They are divided into compartments bordered with box plants. To the northwest, a sequence of themed enclosed spaces and basins creates a literary promenade.
Belvedere and pigeon house
A belvedere with a balustraded terrace stands at the edge of the property overlooking the Garonne. It was originally designed by the Bordeaux architect Louis Garros as the pavilion of Soulac-sur-Mer at the 1895 International Maritime and Colonial Exhibition at the Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux. The estate also contains a Hispano-Moorish pigeon house. Both structures were seriously damaged by the December 1999 storm. Emergency restoration followed, while final restoration remained necessary.
Former greenhouse
A notable metal greenhouse topped by a belvedere once stood on the estate. Built in the style of the late nineteenth century for the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition, it was described as an artistic work.
Service buildings and former wine facilities
Wine-production dependencies
The estate retains brick-and-stone outbuildings and other remnants of its former layout. The former wine-production dependencies have been preserved and reused, including for peacock breeding. A wine storehouse and a vat room flank a third, round dependency.
Carriage garage and stables
The carriage garage and stables are surmounted by a clock signed by Guignan and topped by a bell. Together with the wine buildings, they preserve part of the estate’s former agricultural and domestic arrangement.
