Manoir de la Grand'Cour
ManorHidden Treasure
A seventeenth-century tufa mansion nestling on the outskirts of Tours, a summer hideaway for the writer Jules Romains and the setting for a rare panoramic grisaille wallpaper celebrating the birth of the railway.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
On the southern edge of Tours, on the left bank of the River Cher, the Manoir de la Grand'Cour stands out as one of the most unusual bourgeois residences in Indre-et-Loire. Built of tuffeau, the blonde stone that characterises the heyday of Touraine architecture, its long façade is arranged between a ceremonial gateway and the remains of a once wooded park, now surrounded by the town of Saint-Avertin. What really sets the Grand'Cour apart from its regional counterparts is the presence, in one of the rooms of its nineteenth-century orangery, of a unique panoramic décor: thirty-two strips of wallpaper in grisaille depicting with documentary detail the inaugural journey of the railway between Lyon and Saint-Étienne. Printed around 1840 by the Pignet factory in Saint-Genis-Laval, this set of wallpapers is listed as a historic monument and is one of the few surviving examples in situ of the amazement generated by the railway revolution in France. The attentive visitor will appreciate the superimposition of several layers of history: the classical architecture of the Grand Siècle, the neoclassical orangery of the 19th century, and the literary intimacy conferred on it by Jules Romains, the author of Les Hommes de bonne volonté, who set up his summer study here, surrounded by these landscapes of locomotives and viaducts. The experience of visiting the museum is tinged with a special atmosphere, somewhere between aristocratic memory and bourgeois erudition. The large arched windows of the orangery bathe the rooms in a soft light, ideal for contemplating the details of the panoramic wallpaper, whose misty grey tones evoke the press engravings of the nascent Second Empire. A monument to be apprehended slowly, for those who love places where decorative art and industrial history come together in unexpected ways.
Architecture
The Grand'Cour manor house is in the tradition of Touraine residential architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries, and soberly embodies its essential characteristics. The main building, constructed from tuffeau - soft, luminous limestone quarried from the slopes of the Loire - has an elongated, regular volume, typical of provincial manor houses of the Grand Siècle. The entrance gate, listed since 1946, bears witness to a concern for representation and enclosure typical of middle-class residences of this period. The 19th-century orangery is the most distinctive architectural feature of the complex. Built according to a classic functional plan, it features a long building with a blind back wall that acts as a fence to the street, while the garden façade is wide open with large arched windows designed to maximise sunlight and warmth. Two doors lead to two vast rooms separated by a dividing wall in which an ingenious hot-air heating system was installed, adjustable by means of small hatches - a technical feature typical of the well-tended orangeries of the 19th century. In the smallest room, the wainscoting is at eye level, and the thirty-two strips of panoramic wallpaper hang above it, creating a striking dialogue between industrial décor and classical architecture.
Related Figures
Jules Romains (1885-1972) — romancier, dramaturge et académicien français, auteur des Hommes de bonne volonté, propriétaire du manoir au XXe siècle et initiateur de sa première protection au titre des Monuments historiquesManufacture Pignet (Saint-Genis-Laval) — maison spécialisée dans le papier peint de luxe, auteure du décor panoramique en grisaille vers 1840Propriétaire restaurateur (depuis 1992) — acquéreur du domaine en mauvais état, artisan de sa restauration et découvreur du papier peint panoramique conservé in situ
