Saussey Manor

En un regard

Le château en bref

A few kilometres from Coutances, Saussey Manor is a Norman seigneurial residence that has become a museum site. The seigneury is known from the thirteenth century through the Saussey family; it then passed to the Roque family in 1467, to the Pellevé family in 1548, and to the Le Cointe family at the end of the sixteenth century, before the Le Moyne and Mary de Bactot families. The present manor, which replaced an earlier castle whose location is unknown, was built for the most part between 1608 and 1747. Its tall slate roofs, chimneys, decorated dormer windows and right-angled return wing evoke the architecture of the reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIII. The buildings surround a courtyard, extended by agricultural outbuildings, part of which dates back to the sixteenth century. After the Revolution, the physician Jean-Charles Laville bought it in 1821, followed by the Tanquerey family. In 1960, Roger Monmélien and the antiques dealer Jacques Langelier acquired it and assembled collections there. The manor now houses four museums devoted to historic glassware, French and Italian nativity scenes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, faience, and Norman furniture.