Château de Béduer
The front of the building has a beautiful embossed entrance (the shields at the top are 19th-century) showing the slots which formerly carried the chains to let down the drawbridge over a dry moat.
The château sits within a walled, partly wooded park with rose gardens, fruit trees and a large swimming pool tucked neatly out of sight of the château and is surrounded by its own 14 hectares (35 acres) of meadow land, where in the spring and summer sheep may safely graze.
The Barascs of Béduer were a significant fighting family, defending their rights against more powerful neighbours while intimidating their weaker ones.
They parlayed successfully to retain their lands and eleven châteaux during the Albigensian Crusade before changing sides to defend the County of Toulouse against the French king.
As loyal Catholics, the Barascs defended their château against the Protestants in the Wars of Religion in the 16th century until the death of the last of their line, Deodat VIII in 1559.
The painted ceiling in the Grande Salle dates from the early 17th century as does the kitchen on the ground floor below the second tower, rebuilt during the same period.
A fairly liberal gentleman, the Marquis de Lostanges was well enough liked by the local peasantry that he managed to retain his château, his title and his head at the revolution.
By the early 19th century the Lostanges were spending very little time at Béduer and in 1874 they sold or let the château to a religious order from Villefranche-de-Rouergue.
Worried by the poverty and rural depopulation, Fenaille set up a textile factory and an agricultural college in Aveyron and founded the museum in Rodez that bears his name.
He discovered and restored to its former glory the Renaissance Château de Montal near Saint-Céré, travelling the world buying and bringing back its lost stonework.
In 1908, he reached an agreement with The Louvre that they would return the ornamental stonework they had acquired from Montal on condition that ownership of the château be ceded to the French state.
He reopened the Grande Salle which had been converted into small rooms by the nuns, rebuilt the medieval fireplace and rediscovered the early 17th century painted ceiling.
He found period furniture in Italy and France and acquired the Aubusson tapestries which still add so much to the charm of the château.
Structurally, he rebuilt a section of the roof, lowering it to below the height of the tower, and installed electric lighting – one of the first private homes in the Lot to be so equipped.
When Maurice Fenaiile died in 1937, his widow sold Béduer to a young “femme de letters”, the lawyer, writer and publisher Jeanne Loviton, better known by her pen name as Jean Voilier.
His wife Cecile directly accused Jeanne of complicity in the murder and the theft of his business Editions Denoel.
Shortly before his death Denoël had signed over his shares in his publishing house to a "straw man" Yvonne Dornes to protect them from the risk of loss in view of a number of legal threats against him for collaboration during the war.
But after five years of lawsuits in which Jeanne was ultimately successful in clearing her name, Loviton sold the company to its rival Éditions Gallimard for a substantial profit.
Loviton spent many happy holidays at Béduer and made many improvements including installing toilets inside the thickness of the massive exterior walls.
When this writer's father-in-law aged 72 visited the château in 1984, he spent half an hour with Jeanne Loviton and emerged from the encounter 'with stars in his eyes'.
It was her friend Julian Pitt-Rivers who said of her: "She was the last of the 'grandes horizontales'; she had God's greatest gift to women: she could give an old man an erection."
The château is still privately owned but for the past 20 years has hosted summer concerts, and since 2009, with its three attendant holiday houses, has been available to rent for weddings, family occasions, seminars and corporate and artistic events.
