1958 — 1995

The château’s agony

The night of 3–4 July 1958

The fire

After a failed attempt at listing in 1948, the owners sought to part with the château. A Belgian buyer came forward, supposedly mandated by charities and keen to set up a home for underprivileged children. The sale was made in his favour at the end of May 1958. His main act of administration was to insure the château for a high value — the cost of rebuilding it — then to have scaffolding put up on the west tower and the rendering redone by a mason from Gannat. Barely a month after the sale, on the night of 3–4 July 1958, the château caught fire on every side.

Arson is beyond doubt: six or seven seats of fire were found. Neither the gendarmerie inquiry nor the two-year criminal investigation that followed ever identified the arsonist; the fortunate owner collected a handsome insurance payout, with which he did not see fit to rebuild. On the night of the fire, seeing that the château itself was lost, the firefighters did everything to protect the adjoining outbuildings: the chapel on one side and the kitchens on the other were saved. But it was the end of the Versailles parquets, the star-patterned floors in exotic woods, the lemonwood and ebony library, the pier glasses, panelling and plasterwork — all gone up in smoke on a warm night of a sad Auvergne summer.

La Montagne article of 4 July 1958 on the fire at the château — La Montagne, 4 July 1958

The château's façade gutted after the 1958 fire — The château after the fire

The grand staircase among the debris, the day after the fire — The grand staircase, the morning after

Forty years of neglect

Nature takes over

After the disaster, Villemont was sold in the early 1960s. The neighbouring farm was worked, but the buildings were left without maintenance: within a few years the shell of the main building lay open to the sky, while the outbuildings still had their roofs — for how long?

For nearly forty years the site was left to the whims of nature. Given over to vegetation, the buildings fell prey to an extraordinary growth of ivy and climbing plants; trees grew on the upper floor of the outbuildings, above the vaults, in the rubble of the roof timbers. Neglected, Villemont was looted and vandalised: paving, tiles, ironwork, panelling and ornaments were stolen, torn out or wrecked. The outbuildings’ roofs, some stripped of their tiles, collapsed one after another. A green shell took hold of the place; the great court of honour vanished under a real coppice, where maple, beech and oak trunks reached twenty to thirty-five centimetres in diameter.

Would Villemont disappear for good beneath this jungle? Not quite: in 1995 a rescue operation began that would bring this jewel of 18th-century Auvergne back to life.

The roofless château seen from a helicopter in 1965 — Villemont from a helicopter, 1965

The outbuildings and their arcades in 1965, still roofed — The outbuildings in 1965, still roofed

A tower and outbuildings overrun by trees and ivy — Trees growing on the upper floor of the outbuildings

The chapel almost hidden under ivy — The chapel hidden under the vegetation

Aerial view of the estate in 1992, before clearing — Aerial view before clearing, 1992

The château façade behind the coppice filling the court of honour in 1992 — A coppice in the court of honour, 1992

Sources and further reading

La Montagne, 4 July 1958, on the fire at the château.
Sabine Codet, « Le château de Villemont », Bulletin monumental, vol. 127, no. 2, 1969, p. 157 (read on Persée).
Photographs from 1965 and 1992: archives of the Association Sauvegarde du Château de Villemont.
French Ministry of Culture, Mérimée database, record PA00092456 « Château de Villemont » (view).