3 January 2023
The first acquisition of Maurice Vedy, Antonio Amengual and Mick Micheyl in Pouligny Notre Dame in 1957 was the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame. Bought from the Baroness d'Arripe, the castle, also known as Le Manoir, was built in the early Middle Ages and, more precisely, in the 11th century. Its fortified entrance gates were accessed by means of a drawbridge and a fixed bridge. Long inhabited by nobles, it was the object of important renovations and reconstructions in the 12th and 17th centuries. The current construction dates from the 13th and 17th centuries. Like any very old building, the Castle or Manor House remains today a very mysterious place which is the object of many legends and stories. It is, in particular, supposed to have welcomed Queen Marie-Antoinette for a night. Underground passages are said to extend around the castle for several kilometers. In the book "Les Contes du Vieux Manoir", Jean Ribeyrol-Pecquerie evokes, in particular, the existence of underground passages between the church of Pouligny Notre Dame and the castle and raises the mystery in its terms: "It seems that there was a direct connection between the chapel, which became the parish church, and the castle. Part of this connection was a small open road. One left the holy place through the door on the right in the choir; on the outside there are still the remains of a sundial. The path leading to the castle ended at a washhouse from a fountain, the fountain of Sainte-Radegonde, and about halfway up the hill, one entered through an underground passage leading into the moat. In the castle, two exits were possible, one in the moat (...), the other in one of the cellars of the commons. If the exit through the moat is now walled up, the other one, the one in the cellars, must still exist because there is a rather deep excavation; is it the beginning of the underground passage or a sort of very deep ice house? (...) Another underground passage would exist between the castle and a problematic destination by passing through the new cemetery. A cattle belonging to the castle once had the painful experience of disappearing into a hole that no one knew about. The mystery about these underground passages that lead into the castle remains unresolved, since neither the former nor the current owners have dared to venture into the depths of the castle's cellars. It is rumored that the castle also contains a treasure in the form of a bell filled with gold. This belief would have been so strong in the 19th and 20th centuries that one of the priests of Pouligny Notre Dame would have gone out of his way to pass by the Château every day, praying to heaven that he would one day find the treasure. It is also said that the Manor of Pouligny Notre Dame would have inspired the writer George Sand whose residence was only about ten kilometers from Pouligny Notre Dame and, more precisely, in Nohant. In her novel "Mauprat", whose plot took place in the Marche and Berry regions and which she published in 1837, the castle of La Roche Mauprat may have turned out to be the Manor of Pouligny Notre Dame, but nothing is less certain. What is certain, however, is that there is a reference to Pouligny Notre Dame in the novel since one of the protagonists of the novel, Antoine de Mauprat, is described as having gone there and slept there. The presence of a virgin under a bell in the living room of the castle would attest, in any case, to a link, however tenuous, between George Sand and the Manor of Pouligny Notre Dame. Indeed, this virgin would have belonged to the Good Lady of Nohant and would have been offered by one of the members of George Sand's family to the owners of the Castle at the time. In addition to being the main residence of Maurice Vedy, Antonio Amengual and Mick Micheyl, the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame was also a magnificent exhibition space for the works of Mick Micheyl whose motto had become, by the mid-1970s, "I sand therefore I am". A graduate of the Beaux Arts in Lyon, she had never given up drawing and painting during her career as a singer and producer, but in 1974 she left the limelight to devote herself to creating stainless steel. To Le Point magazine, she explained this change of life in 2013 in these terms: "It was thanks to a friend who was sanding down an old car body in the sun that I had the revelation. I invented a technique and filed a patent. In 1974, I left the boards for steel. This famous technique consisted, with the help of an electric sander, to make appear on steel plates of the forms which refracted the light by suggesting volumes. For nearly three decades, she sold her works and received commissions from all over the world, including the Musée Masséna in Nice and the Presidency of Senegal. In addition to being exhibited in the outbuildings of the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame, her work was also shown at the Hotel Les Dryades and in numerous galleries around the world. She continued to create and exhibit her work for several years after leaving the Manoir de Pouligny Notre Dame and the Domaine des Dryades. The steel particles seriously injured her eyes and she was finally forced to give up her passion for steel in the late 2000s. You can still admire Mick Micheyl's work in the Hotel Spa Les Dryades, including several of his sculptures in the breakfast room on the 6th floor and a painting in the Bistrot des Dryades.
