The Manoir de Mézarnou is a fortified 16th century manor-house built on the site of an old medieval building, property in 1091, of Pierre André de Parcevaux, husband of Sybille de Trogoff. In 1145, Ollivier de Parcevaux donated to the abbey of Relecq. In 1250, Pierre de Parcevaux accompanied sire de Chateaubriand to the Holy Land with King Louis and the Duke of Brittany during the Seventh Crusade. In 1297, Pierre de Parcevaux was on the council of the Duke of Brittany. In 1393, Tanguy de Parcevaux married Odile de Kerlouan. The son of the latter, Allain, was secretary of John V of Brittany.
The building was rebuilt in the 16th century by Yves de Parcevaux, lord of Prat-Hir. The château was looted in 1594 by Yves Du Liscouët (one of the notorious chiefs of the royalist party during the troubles of the Holy League), then visited the following year by Guy Éder de La Fontenelle who kidnaps and marries Marie Le Chevoir (daughter of a first marriage of Renée Coëtlogon, wife of Hervé de Parcevaux). The chapel was once located 100m to the south, near the manor's former entrance, at a place called 'Park ar Japel' It has disappeared along with the dovecote, which was reported in the sale of 1720 to Marshal Poinçonneau.
After the French Revolution, Mézarnou is sold as national property and the farm was bought by Bonaventure Ollivier. The family Abhervé-Guegen becomes owner of Mézarnou in 1806, passing by marriage into the hands of the Martin family. In 1985, part of Mézarnou belongs to the Martin family, the other part, since 1960, belongs to Louis Appéré (formerly the family Jaffrès). In 1995, Mézarnou was shared between three owners (the Society of History and Archeology, Joseph Le Goff and Roger Aballain).
Mézarnou was built according to the invariable plan of old Breton manors. A rectangular closed courtyard with the main edifice at the far end, on either side two longères of service buildings (the one on the right now ruined) and in front a wall more or less fortified and pierced with two unequal doors (now ruined), the cart entrance and pedestrian door. This wall, of a thickness of 1.50m, bore a gallery on corbelled constructions to which one attained access by a passage from the first floor of the defensive tower. Defence was assured by this small tower with loopholes. Manor-type of the floral gothic style, sometimes called the Queen Anne style, Mézarnou is still composed of two main buildings joining at right angles, the remains of the tower that defended the gate and a portion of the wall.
The corps de logis which contains the remains of the lower-hall and upper-hall, also has a large magnificent Gothic dormer window, made of real stone lacing, with a double projection of formed crockets, creeping foliages, and grotesques on a high roofing of the era. Its elegant pediment with pinnacles is stamped with four escutcheons.
There is a large square pavilion - at the angle between the two wings - that contains the staircase. It is flanked by a lookout turret on corbel-brackets. With monolithic steps of two metres in length, this staircase ends at the second floor by a slender column of two finely chiselled capitals from which rise up, as a sun, the wide slabs forming the ceiling.
The manor-house also contains several large fireplaces in the kitchen, lower-hall, upper-hall, and chambers. In the lower groundfloor-hall, there is a superb monumental fireplace, with an opening of 2.5 metres, bearing the arms of Rohan. Some characters carved in stone, among them a biniou player (Breton bagpipe), animals and sculpted heads complete the decoration.
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).