En un regard
Le château en bref
In the hamlet of La Fresnaye, in the commune of La Puisaye, on the borders of the Perche and at the edge of large wooded massifs, stands a residence described as a château or pavilion of La Fresnaye. It should not be confused with the homonymous manor at Falaise, in the Calvados, with which this entry had until now been mixed up. Local sources present it as a former hunting lodge attached to a vast forest estate. Between 1900 and 1920, the photographer Gustave-William Lemaire took a photograph of it, at a time when the property belonged to Mademoiselle de Ratisbonne. Between the wars, Jean Ratisbonne (1908-2020), a forest landowner, lived there and managed several hundred hectares of woodland. According to the biographical dictionary of the CEDREL association, a family of Belgian refugees occupied the house for the whole of the Occupation. Jean Ratisbonne joined the Libération-Nord movement in 1943 and was appointed in August 1944 head of the FFI groups of the Ressuintes and of La Puisaye. No entry in the Inventaire nor any protection as a monument historique has been found, and the date of construction as well as the architecture of the building remain to be documented.
