Château des Lauriers: Historic Estate and Museum of Social Protection
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Château des Lauriers is a historic estate in Lormont, France, whose present château was created through rebuilding that began in 1860 and continued with extensions in the late nineteenth century. Its history reaches back to the sixteenth century, when the property formed part of lands associated with the Bordeaux archbishops and the rural estates around Lormont. It later became a wine-producing domain, a residence of the Gradis family, a wartime-occupied property, and finally a museum devoted to the history of social protection.
Early estates and ecclesiastical connections
The domain lay near the medieval Place des Justices, later called Croix Rouge, where executions ordered by local lords took place. The earliest known references to the property date from 1530, when it was called Israel. A land register compiled between 1611 and 1619 lists extensive possessions near Château Lacroix belonging to Martin d’Israel, a procurator at the Parliament of Bordeaux. These holdings probably included the estate that later became known as Les Lauriers.
In 1684, Mademoiselle Delegier inherited the large Au Tressan domain from Jean-Alphonse Delegier, abbot of Caignotte. The inheritance included Les Lauriers. She transferred the property in 1720 to Raimond de Gombaud, a Bordeaux gentleman, former first Jurat, and knight of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. A Jurat was a municipal magistrate in Bordeaux, while the Order of Saint Lazarus was a medieval Christian military and hospitaller order. After Gombaud’s death in 1726, the estate passed to his son, Antoine-Alexandre Gombaud, an abbot.
Under Antoine-Alexandre Gombaud, the estate became a fief of the church fabric of Saint-Martin of Lormont. A church fabric, or parish church administration, managed material goods and finances, so the property was then an ecclesiastical asset connected with the church. It remained attached to the Grand Tressan farm.
The Peyronnet estate and changing names
By 1757, the rural property contained a master’s house, a chapel, servants’ quarters, a barn, and other agricultural buildings. Its grounds included a garden with a fountain, vineyards, arable land, high forest, coppice, meadows, crops, livestock, carts, and farming and gardening equipment. Pierre Peyronnet, a Bordeaux bourgeois gentleman and merchant, bought the estate on 23 November 1757. A domestic chapel for his widow was built around 1771.
The property had several names during this period. The 1760 Belleyme map calls it Rihael, or d’Israel, while the 1820 cadastre identifies it as Portail de Fer, probably referring to an elaborate wrought-iron entrance. The earlier name continued to be used by later owners. These changing designations reflect the estate’s succession of owners and its continuing place within the countryside around Lormont.
The Gradis family and the wine estate
On 19 May 1828, Isaac Raphaël Mendes acquired the lands, vineyards, orchards, gardens, woods, château, and house at Croix Rouge, Lormont, and Portail de Fer. He gave the whole property the name Domaine d’Israel and left it to his distant cousin Benjamin Gradis, known as “the Younger.” Benjamin Gradis inherited the estate in 1839 together with its agricultural land, meadows, vineyards, house, dependencies, and other buildings.
Wine production soon gave the property a strong commercial reputation. Lormont wines were highly valued, and a commercial brochure published in June 1841 placed the Lauriers designation above those of Château Pape Clément and Château Haut-Brion. The estate therefore functioned not only as a residence and agricultural holding but also as a recognized wine property.
Henri Gradis, Benjamin Gradis’s son and a prominent figure in Bordeaux and Lormont, repeatedly sought to embellish the property. His 1891 will refers to these intentions. The Gradis family occupied the estate for more than a century, during which the earlier rural holding was transformed into the more elaborate château that survives today.
Rebuilding and twentieth-century transformations
Remodelling began in 1860. The earlier residence was demolished and replaced by Château des Lauriers in its present form. In 1886, the central pavilion was enlarged with two lateral pavilions designed by Michel-Louis Garros. The resulting building incorporated decorative features associated with the period from the 1860s to the 1920s.
The estate’s wartime history began a new phase during the Second World War. Gaston Gradis inherited the domain in 1943 after the deaths of his grandfather Moïse-Henri and his father Raoul Gradis. He fled France because of Nazi persecution, while the German occupation of the estate included the construction of a blockhouse in the park. Gaston Gradis retained the property until 1948.
On 7 May 1948, the Gironde Primary Health Insurance Fund acquired the domain for five million francs. A Primary Health Insurance Fund, or CPAM, is a local organization of France’s statutory health-insurance system. The CPAM first considered establishing a permanent health colony, but the plan was judged uneconomic. Instead, the château was converted into a women’s rest and convalescence home, which opened on 1 October 1951.
High occupancy led to an extension project in 1960 and to an auxiliary building placed in service in 1962. From 1971 to 1992, the CPAM developed further extension schemes as accommodation requirements changed. Convalescent patients were later housed in new buildings of the Lauriers convalescence facility, designed by an architect specializing in hospital construction and opened as early as 1978.
Between 1965 and 1985, the agricultural parts of the domain were divided and sold to public and private bodies, including Toit Girondin, the Roads and Bridges administration, the Gironde Development Company, the Regional Social Security Fund of Aquitaine, and the Ricard company. These transfers enabled the construction of the motorway interchange and access roads to the Aquitaine Bridge, as well as the Coteaux retirement home.
Preservation and museum use
After the château lost its former function, it was abandoned and deteriorated severely. In 1984, the Amis du Vieux Lormont campaigned to preserve the Gradis heritage and prevent possible demolition. Several reuse projects failed, but in 1989 the CPAM chose to retain the institution’s social vocation. At the initiative of Jean-Pierre Rey, formerly director of the Gironde fund, the château was restored and rehabilitated as the Musée national de l’Assurance maladie.
The museum presents the historical development and principal ideas of social protection up to the creation of social security. Mutualism, a system of collective self-help and member-based protection, forms part of this wider history. The building remains owned by the Gironde CPAM and is listed in the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage. It is described as France’s only museum devoted to the history of solidarity and mutualism.
Remains
The château and its architectural composition
Residential block and exterior
Château des Lauriers stands within a large park whose winding avenues were designed by Louis-Bernard Fischer, the landscape architect associated with Bordeaux’s public garden. The estate was formerly surrounded by vineyards and stood beside the important road from Lormont to Saint-André-de-Cubzac. It is now incorporated into the urban fabric of the Bordeaux metropolitan area.
The principal residential block is built of dressed stone and retains a double-depth plan with an eight-bay facade and one full storey. Two-storey blocks enlarge the front facade, while two single-storey pavilions with roof terraces extend the rear. Each roof has an attic storey lit by dormer windows. The roofing combines a pitched roof with a central pavilion over the front part of the central block and another pitched roof with two lateral pavilions over the rear.
The elevations combine pilasters, moulded bands, rustication, and cornices. A pilaster is a shallow, wall-attached element resembling a column, while rustication emphasizes the joints or blocks of masonry. Upper-storey windows carry pediments and volutes, which are spiral ornaments. Dormers, balustrades beside the terraces, weather vanes, and ridge finials complete the exterior decoration. A dormer is a window projecting from a roof, and a ridge finial is an ornament set along the roof ridge.
Interior arrangement and decorative features
On the ground floor, rooms follow a straight sequence of connecting spaces. The upper floor is arranged along a long corridor. A straight-flight timber staircase and service staircases connect the levels. One lateral pavilion contains a large hall with Baroque-style decoration assembled from older elements, and the hall houses the main staircase.
The entrance hall contains sculpted eighteenth-century columns that are said by some to have come from the masts of ships belonging to the Gradis shipping company. Its Henri II-style fireplace bears arabesques, palms, and angels. The grand staircase includes two rostral columns, which are columns decorated with ship prows or beaks and traditionally associated with maritime achievement.
Park, estate buildings, and later structures
Entrances and landscaped grounds
Decorated wrought-iron grilles and a half-moon gateway partially enclose the park. The grounds were shaped by winding avenues and formed part of a wider estate that included gardens, a fountain, vineyards, cultivated land, woodland, meadows, and rural installations. These elements preserve the relationship between the château and the agricultural domain from which it developed.
Chapel and agricultural estate
The earlier estate included a domestic chapel, an earlier house later transformed into a U-shaped residence for the Peyronnet family, and agricultural buildings serving the rural property. The chapel built around 1771 for Pierre Peyronnet’s widow belongs to this phase of domestic and estate use. Barns, servants’ quarters, cultivation areas, livestock, carts, and farming tools formed part of the working landscape associated with the residence.
Wartime and postwar buildings
A blockhouse was built in the park during the German occupation, adding a military structure to the estate’s residential and agricultural remains. The wider domain later acquired auxiliary and convalescence buildings connected with its medical use, including the auxiliary building placed in service in 1962 and hospital-related buildings opened as early as 1978.
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