Château Les Dryades

History

The first acquisition of Maurice Vedy, Antonio Amengual and Mick Micheyl from Pouligny Notre Dame in 1957 was the Notre Dame Pouligny Manor.

Purchased from Baroness arripe, the Castle, also known as The Manor, was built in the early Middle Ages and, more precisely, in the 11th century. Its fortified entrance gates were accessed with a drawbridge and a fixed bridge. Long inhabited by nobles, it underwent major renovations and reconstructions in the 12th and 17th centuries. The current construction dates from the 13th and 17th centuries.

Like any very old building, the Castle or Manor is still a very mysterious place that is the subject of many legends and stories.
Undergrounds would stretch around the Castle for several kilometers. In the book "The Tales of the Old Manor", Jean Ribeyrol-Pecquerie evokes, in particular, the existence of underground scars between the church of Pouligny Notre Dame and the Castle and makes the mystery hover in its terms: "It seems that there was a direct link between the chapel became church of the parish and the castle. Part of this connection was a small open-air road. We left the holy place by the door leading to the right in the choir; on the outside still exist the remains of a sundial. The path to the castle led to a washhouse from a fountain, the Sainte-Radegonde fountain, and about halfway down the coast, one entered through an underground leading into the ditches. At the castle, two outings were possible, one in the moat (...), the other in one of the cellars of the commons. If the exit by the moat is currently walled, the other, that of the cellars, must still exist because there is a fairly deep excavation; is it the beginning of the underground or some kind of very deep cooler? (...) Another underground would exist between the castle and a problematic destination through the new cemetery. A cattle belonging to the castle once had the painful experience of disappearing into a hole that no one knew." The mystery about these undergrounds that would lead into the Castle remains unsolved since neither the former owners nor the current owners dared to venture into the depths of the cellars of the Castle.
It is rumoured that the Castle would also house a treasure in the form of a bell filled with gold. This belief would have been so strong in the 19th and 20th centuries that one of the priests of Pouligny Notre Dame would have tried every day to pass by the Castle, praying to heaven to one day find the treasure.

It is also said that the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame would have inspired the writer George Sand, whose residence was only about ten kilometres from Pouligny Notre Dame and, more specifically, to Nohant. In her novel "Mauprat" which was part of the March and the Berry, which she published in 1837, the Château de la Roche Mauprat might turn out to be Pouligny's Manor Notre Dame, but nothing is less certain. What is certain in any case is that it is well referred to Pouligny Notre Dame in the novel since one of the protagonists of the novel, Antoine de Mauprat, is described as going there and having slept there. The presence of a virgin under a bell in the chateau's living room would attest, in any case, to a very tenuous link between George Sand and the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame. Indeed, this virgin would have belonged to the Good Lady of Nohant and was offered by one of the members of George Sand's family to the owners of the Castle at the time.
In addition to becoming the main residence of Maurice Vedy, Antonio Amengual and Mick Micheyl, Pouligny Notre Dame's Manor was also a magnificent exhibition space for the works of Mick Micheyl, whose motto had become, in the mid-1970s, "I pumice so I am." A graduate of the Fine Arts of Lyon, she had never given up, during her career as a singer and producer, drawing and painting, but in 1974 she left the limelight to devote herself to creation on stainless steel. She explained in 2013 to Le Point magazine: "It was thanks to a bodybuilder friend who sanded an old car carcass in the sun that I got the revelation. I invented a technique and filed a patent. In 1974, I left the boards for steel." This famous technique consisted, with the help of an electric sander, to show on steel plates shapes that refracted the light by suggesting volumes. For nearly three decades, she sold her works and commissioned her works from all over the world, including the Masséna Museum in Nice and the Presidency of Senegal. In addition to being exhibited in the outbuildings of Pouligny Notre Dame's Manor, his works were also shown at the Hotel Les Dryads and in many galleries around the world. She continued to create and exhibit her works for a few more years after leaving Pouligny's Notre Dame Manor and the Domaine des Dryads. As the steel particles seriously injured her eyes, she was finally forced to give up her passion for steel in the late 2000s.
You can still admire in the walls of the Hotel Les Dryades works by Mick Micheyl including several of his sculptures in the breakfast room on the 6th floor and a painting in the Bistrot des Dryads.

The castle today

With seven bedrooms all with a bathroom, large kitchen, lounges, large dining room and sauna, Château Les Dryades is the perfect place to spend a holiday or a weekend or to organize private events or Professionals. In the right wing of the Castle, a two-bedroom apartment and a five-bedroom apartment complete the accommodation offer.