Château de Roche-la-Molière

En un regard

Le château en bref

Le château de Roche-la-Molière est un édifice inscrit aux monuments historiques le 17 décembre 1985. On 26 February 1772, the merchant Jacques Neyron (1733-1811; secrétaire du roi, or royal secretary, in 1768, mayor of Saint-Etienne from 1778 to 1783, elder brother of Antoine and uncle of André-Antoine Neyron) acquired the castle estate and the lordship of Roche for 205,000 livres from the Duke of Béthune-Chârost and Ancenis, who had bought them in 1765 (the Roche coal-mining concession, which the Duke obtained in 1766, was itself ceded in 1786 to René Eustache d'Osmond). Neyron then carried out major works there, chiefly interior ones (the salons). The lord of the manor and entrepreneur Jacques Neyron was thus the last lord of Roche-la-Molière. Before the Duke of Chârost, the lords of Roche-la-Molière had successively been, with the lordship passing by marriage: the great Forez family of Lavieu (of Roche-la-Molière; a branch of the Lavieu family also held Feugerolles: see that article for references, notably Edouard Perroy); then the d'Augerolles/d'Ogerolles de Sapolgue family (St-Polgues), active in Forez and Roannais, originally from the Feurs and Salt-en-Donzy region, and not from Augerolles in Auvergne, which gave its name to Ogerolles in St-Romain and St-Just. On 31 March 1584, Antoine d'Augerolles de Roche-la-Molière and his son Jean were killed by their enemy Aymar de St-Priest de St-Etienne in an ambush laid at la Rochette, as they were on their way to an Easter Mass said in the church of