Château de Chaumont is a ruined château undergoing restoration. It is located in Chaumont, straddling the municipalities of Mainsat and La Serre-Bussière-Vieille, in the Creuse department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in central France.
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The path leading to the château (rue de Chaumont) is in the town of Mainsat, but the building itself is in the neighbouring town of La Serre-Bussière-Vieille.[1][2]
The château was built in the early 20th century by a Russian industrialist for his protégé Eugénie Bardet, a young singer from Creuse.[3]
Children's home: a refuge for Jews (1939–1945)
From 1939, the château was rented to the charity Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) ("Children's relief work").[3][4][dead link] From 1940, the history of the château is linked to the rescue of Jews during the Second World War. The Creuse department welcomed approximately 3,000 Jews including 1,000 children between 1939 and 1945. The OSE had three secular reception centres for children in Creuse, including Chaumont, directed by Lotte Schwarz. The Synagogue de Neuilly, created in 1866 in the Paris region, moved in 1939 due to the German occupation of the city to Creuse as it was in the zone libre ("free zone").[citation needed]
In 1940, French humourist Popeck, then four years old, took refuge at the château until 1942.[5] Memoirist Fanny Ben-Ami and her sisters sheltered there for three years before the children were betrayed.[6]
The concert promoter Bill Graham, later based in San Francisco, also spent part of his childhood at the château as a child refugee of the Nazis before traveling to the United States.[7]
At the entrance to rue de Chaumont there is a commemorative plaque.[3][8]
Fire and abandonment
When Bardet died, her heirs decided to sell the château. In 1967, the château was sold to Jean-François Mironnet, steward of Coco Chanel, and his ex-model wife. Chanel has therefore never owned the premises.[3]
In February 1986, the building was destroyed by fire and only the external walls remained standing.[9] Mironnet's wife, alone in the château at the time of the fire, managed to escape from the flames by tying bed sheets through a window.[3]
In 2017, the property was put up for sale on the French classified ads website Leboncoin.[10]
In October 2022, Dan Preston, an English expatriate and founder of the YouTube channel Escape to rural France,[11] purchased the château and started its complete restoration.[12]
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