listed manors for sale Sarthe, France

A 15th and 16th-century manor house, listed as a Historical Monument, its outbuildings and 12-hectare grounds in the Mayenne department. From the village, a small road leads to a private driveway up to the entrance porch, which opens onto a main courtyard. The driveway also extends behind the manor and provides access to two outbuildings located to the west. A third outbuilding encloses the courtyard to the east, near the entrance. Pastures spread out on either side of the driveway. One of them is continued to the north with the first part of an oak grove, which then unfolds towards the west. The manor’s courtyard is extended by a garden, which overlooks a small river. Two other pastures located on the other side are accessible via a bridge. Constructed partially over a basement level, the manor contains four floors, including two built into the roof space. Made out of stone and rubble and coated in plaster, its edifice is crowned with gabled slate roofs and stone rims, punctuated by dormer windows topped with sculpted ornaments. Stone mullioned windows cadence the façade and a double flight staircase leads to the front door. In the back, the body of the main building is flanked by a square tower with a tented roof, a staircase tower and a round tower with a pointed roof. To the east, a small two-storey, hipped slate roof building is attached to the square tower. A cellar, accessible from the outside, is located under a portion of the manor. Its walls are made out of small sandstone masonry, which could date to the 11th and 12th centuries. The manor’s façades and roof, as well as its eastern two-storey wing, are listed as historical monuments.

A restored 16th-century mansion with over seven hectares of grounds, nestled in France’s River Loir valley and listed as a historical monument. A quiet country lane leads through meadows and farmland on a plateau. From this lane, a driveway lined with North American oaks leads up to the seigneurial mansion. A car park lies next to an entrance to a vast courtyard. You cross a bridge over a water-filled moat on the south side. The mansion stands straight ahead. All the buildings are arranged around the courtyard. A tree-dotted garden lies on the east side, behind a high stone wall yet within the moat’s enclosure. In the north-west corner of the moat-enclosed complex, another bridge stretches across the moat. From this spot, you can gaze out at meadows where majestic trees tower. A small wood also lies in the property’s north-west corner, beside its boundaries. Meadows evenly spread around the moat-formed island cover an area of around six hectares. The estate dates back to the 14th century, when the land was part of the nearby fiefdom of La Mothe d’Olbeau. Over the centuries, several families followed one after another on this estate that forms a self-sufficient home. The dwelling was probably built in the 15th century, then extended and redesigned between the late 16th century and the early 17th century to create, above all, its staircase tower and central pavilion. All the fireplaces inside date back to this period and were doubtless crafted by a specialist stone cutter. In the 18th century, the rear eastern pavilion with large windows, a section slightly lower in height, was added to the edifice and the south-east-facing facade was transformed to harmonise the whole mansion’s appearance. In the 16th century, a range of fortifications were made, including the surrounding wall, the moat with its bridges, a fortified tower, and more than twenty arrow slits. At the start of the 20th century, the estate covered around 150 hectares that included smallholdings and a mill.