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Château de Javarzay was reconstructed in 1514 by members of the House of Rochechouart. There was originally a medieval castle which had an enceinte flanked by 12 towers, of which only two remain.
The property has had a number of owners; the Rochefoucauld-Roye family bought it from François de Rochechouart of Chandeniers in 1655; Jérôme Phélypeaux, Count of Pontchartrain and minister of Louis XIV; Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, lawyer of Louis XVI. Jérôme Phélypeaux, Secretary of State for the Navy, son of the Chancellor of France Louis, bought the estate of Javarzay in 1712 for the sum of 100,000 livres, but there was a family connection: his wife was Eléonore-Christine de La Rochefoucauld, daughter of Frédéric-Charles, Count of Roucy and Roye. In 1785, at least, the owner was Joseph Michel Le Blois, advocate at the military tribunals during the French Revolution. His daughter, Marie-Anne (born in the château in 1787) married Ange Achille de Brunet, Count of Neuilly.
What remains of the château, the most imposing of the period in Deux-Sèvres, is the building which joins the two towers and the chapel. The left wing has been destroyed and the right wing is a later construction. The enceinte was demolished between 1820 and 1824 and the sculptures have disappeared. The orangery dates from 1854.
The Château de Javarzay combines both Renaissance and feudal aspects with its machicolations and its moat as well as conical roofs covered with slate. Its entrance pavilion is flanked by four corbelled turrets.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).