Château de Pompignan

Of some literary and historical interest because of the association with its builder, Jean-Jacques Lefranc, the first Marquis de Pompignan, the château is noteworthy today for containing in its grounds a good example, though in neglected and dilapidated condition, of a parc à fabriques - a landscape garden with architectural constructions and hydraulic systems (together known in English as follies).

The village of Pompignan is located a day's journey (25 km) from Toulouse on the natural road along the right bank of the Garonne to Bordeaux, and it was a way stop even in pre-Roman times.

Its name is derived from Pompinianum, the domain of Pompinius, a notable of the Gallo-Roman era, whose villa was sited on the edge of the hillside about a kilometer south of the present chateau.

However, while the fenestration proportions are similar, the facades at Pompignan are much less ornate, relying for their decorative effect on brickwork details, the play of colour between brick and rendering, and on the indentations produced by the short nibs at the centre and either end of the main (south-eastern) façade.

Both buildings are oriented towards views of landscape gardens, but Pompignan was planned as such, whereas the hameau at the Petit Trianon was added twenty years afterwards, by a different architect and patron.

The terrace on which the chateau sits, some ten to twenty metres above the village, is girdled with a massive brick retaining wall, in good condition, which is a listed item in the protection notices.

Lefranc’s chateau is built on a stone base, mainly from pink Toulouse brick, with delicate use of gray render to achieve a tawny effect in good light.

It is carefully oriented (along a northwest-southeast axis) to take advantage of existing natural views created by its position on a terrace overlooking the valley of the Garonne to the west and the rising hillside to the east.

It is clear from documents preserved in the family archives that the Marquis de Pompignan was personally involved with the architectural conception and the ornamentation of the buildings, evidenced by letters, plans, designs and annotations in his own hand.

The main façade looks out over lawns with magnificent specimen trees, then across undulating meadows which give glimpses of the follies and water features, and finally upwards over the rising forest until the view is cut off at the horizon created by the top of the ridge.

The terrace on which the chateau and its lawns sit forms the point of a promontory, and the park stretches away from it to the east, enclosing a thickly-wooded valley of undulating and then rising land some 35 hectares in extent.

The park’s long south-eastern boundary is formed by the road running along the edge of the ridge above, the chemin de la moissagaise, part of the ancient pilgrimage Way of St James that leads from Moissac, some 40 km downstream, to Compostella in Spain.

Lefranc spent much of his early life in the Château de Cayx, where some of the inspiration (in terms of siting, landscape and views) for Pompignan is found.

[17] In 1802, a series of pencil drawings of the chateau and its park (the carnet or notebook of 1802)[18] was created by an unsigned hand[19] which depict some of the fabriques as they existed at the time of the visit.

The ruins of this folly - though not the statue - still exist, on a small rise in clear view of someone leaving the chateau, but all that remains now is the exposed brick frame, showing the arched opes but without an upper structure.

[24] A funerary column in brick, which seems to have commemorative connotations, supports "an infant in fired clay, almost naked, with a crest placed behind him, upset and wiping his tears with a cloth".

[26] The seigneury, or feudal lordship, of Pompignan was in the hands of the Maurand family, before passing to the Galards, then to the viscounts of Terride, and to others again, before its acquisition by Jaques Lefranc.

Jean-Jacques Lefranc was elevated to the marquisate by royal appointment, for services rendered (in defending monarchical and ecclesiastical powers against opposition generated by the Encyclopédistes) in 1763, and from this point his garden began to get recognition as a proper parc du chateau (that is, of a marquis).

John Stuart Mill, the English thinker and politician, began a formative year visiting France at the age of 14 with a two-week stay at Pompignan in June 1820.

Mills was in Pompignan as a guest of Samuel Bentham, who was renting a property in the grounds, giving weight to the belief[29] that the marquis (the second) was impecunious at that point.

[31] By that time, the landscape garden was neglected and had become a wooded area; in 1842 the departmental archives record complaints of lack of maintenance and tree overgrowth causing damage to the church, which was demolished in 1844, the materials being re-used to build the present St Gregory's.

However, the restructuring involved ... the destruction of an admirable park whose trees furnished wood to a sawmill for two years ...[34] The estate was purchased sometime in 1928 by the Dominicaines de l'Immaculée Conception, an order of Dominican sisters who catered to the needs of blind children.

This would leave the existing line near St Jory, about 10 km south of the point it is now due to make the eastward turn, and rejoin the proposed route just after Pompignan, but above it and out of sight.

However, according to the minister, the proposals advocated by USV (essentially running the tracks close to the existing A62 motorway, which mounts the scarp at a shallower angle some 10 km south of Pompignan), merited study in more depth before a decision could be made.