Etelan Castle
Located on the right bank of the Seine, between the bridges of Brotonne and Tancarville, overlooking the last loop of the river, the castle of Etelan enjoys an exceptional site. It is a privileged place where the environment has not changed for centuries. A place of calm and serenity, Etelan and its park, almost 30 hectares, are resolutely out of time.
Historical monument, listed in the additional inventory, the castle of Etelan was built from 1494 by Louis Picart on the site of a castle, razed on the orders of Louis XI. From the medieval construction, there remains only a cellar, a wall of enclosure and the «House of Guards» dated 1350. Built in a Gothic style, the building is contemporary with the Palais de Justice and the Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde de Rouen, as well as the old Château de Clères. It is composed of two main buildings with alternating stones and bricks connected by a stone staircase gallery dating from the first Norman Renaissance.
History:
A marble plate sealed in Ételan’s Cabinet retraces the list of
owners of the estate since 1383.
It was in 1494 that Louis Picart, bailiff of Troyes and Tournaisis, friend and chamberlain of King Louis XII, whom he will accompany in Italy, undertook the construction of the current castle. His granddaughter, Charlotte d'Esquetot, married Charles de Cossé, Maréchal de Brissac. In July 1563, she received in Etelan Catherine de Médicis, then Governess of France, and the young king Charles IX who had just taken over Le Havre aux Anglais (27 July 1563). It was at the castle of Etelan that Catherine de Medicis, on the advice of Michel de l'Hôpital, decided to proclaim, one year in advance, the King’s majority in the Rouen Parliament (4 August). The castle remained the property of the Maréchaux de Brissac until 1621, when it passed by marriage to the family of Epinay-Saint-Luc, who sold it in 1714 to Charles Henault. Jean-François Henault, President of the Parliament of Paris and Superintendent of the Maison de la Reine Marie Leczinska, will receive
his father. President Henault, a famous historian, a great friend of Voltaire and the Philosophers, bequeathed him to his nephew, the Earl of Jonzac, in 1770.
From 1774, the castle will be successively the property of the families
Belhomme de Glatigny, Deshommets de Martainville, Deschamps de Boishébert, Desgenetais, Calstelbajac and Charbonnières.
The chronicle tells us that the following characters stayed or passed to Ételan: Louis XI (1475), François I (during the construction of the Hâvrede- Grâce in 1517), Catherine de Médicis and Charles IX in the company of the future Henri III, Henri IV, of Marguerite de France (Queen Margot) and Michel de l'Hôpital (1563), Voltaire (1723-1724), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1865), Gustave Eiffel (1886), André Caplet, composer, Grand Prix de Rome, will often stay there and finish his famous three-voice mass there (1920).