The archives of the house
These documents were handed to us separately, by the hand of the previous owner’s widow. This is not a private individual’s box of papers but a notarial case file — the one the practice at Livry kept under the name of the affair — and if it has reached us, it is because Bernard Helleboid was a notary.
We present them here exactly as they are, with their yellowed paper and their tears.
For sale by private treaty, practice of Me Berthier
The practice of Maître Berthier, notary at Livry, has a private-treaty sale notice printed. This time it is no longer a matter of seizing but of tempting — and the notary sets out the full inventory of a gentleman’s residence.
On the ground floor — a hall with a stone staircase and wrought-iron banister; to the left, a study, a billiard room, a drawing room; to the right, a fine Norman dining room, pantry, kitchen, scullery, dairy.
On the floor above — seven bedrooms, a bathroom, a linen room.
Above that — six attic rooms, two of them with fireplaces.
The outbuildings — a large stable for eight horses; a coach house big enough to be divided in three; a loft able to hold ten to twelve thousand bales of hay; a greenhouse with heating installed; a cider press “in perfect condition”; an apple store; a cellar for fifteen barrels.
Around it — a well, a poultry yard, a French-style forecourt, a kitchen garden entirely walled in, a park of four and a half hectares planted with “very fine firs”. And, all around the house, thirty-five hectares of pasture fed by the water of the pond, four of them planted with apple trees.
The notice states that the house is “entirely as new”, that the floors are almost all oak, and that the roof is in good condition.
Taking of possession: 25 December 1926.
Sale on conversion of a property seizure, 19 March 1937
Large, printed in black on yellow paper by the Courrier du Bessin. Its first word is VENTE; below, in smaller type: sur conversion de saisie immobilière RINUY.
Friday 19 March 1937, half past one precisely, auction room of the Civil Court of Bayeux, rue de la Chaîne.
Property seized from — Hippolyte-Hyacinthe-Célestin Rinuy and Lucien-Hippolyte-Hyacinthe-Célestin Rinuy, with Berthe-Jeanne-Hélyacine Bordeux, his wife, residing together at Orbois.
Proceedings brought by — Eugène Besnard, landowner at Caumont-l’Éventé, and Jacques-Désiré Lepoultier, landowner at Livry.
The estate carries its name here in full: “Domaine du Château du Bû ou du Bel”.
First lot — the house: kitchen, pantry, dining room, hall, large dining room, study and drawing room; seven bedrooms upstairs; attic rooms and lofts on the second floor. Then the buildings in front of and behind the château, the large courtyard, the garden. On the pasture known as the herbage du Bû stands a large stone building roofed with slate, “known as the old Château du Bû”, with on the ground floor a large cellar containing an ancien pressoir à tour.
Second lot — a piece of land and a working quarry known as “Le Champ Baucher”.
The boundaries, as the poster gives them:
- West the Orbois road and M. Flaust
- North the road from Caumont-l’Éventé to Caen and M. Saint-Martin
- East M. Saint-Martin and the Brazil heirs
- South the country lane known as rue David and M. Dubourg
Area — a single holding of 35 hectares 60 ares 60 centiares according to the land register, but of 31 hectares 45 ares 61 centiares according to the title deeds. Both figures appear on the poster, one below the other, without anyone attempting to reconcile them.
Reserve prices — first lot, 220 000 francs; second lot, 30 000 francs.
This poster exists in two formats in our archives: the large yellow placard and a reduced version, framed.
The surveyor’s plans
For the 1937 sale the chartered surveyor E. Avias, place Saint-Sauveur in Caen, drew up two plans.
The first, the cadastral designation at 1:2500, carries both communes written out in full — “Commune de Hottot-les-Bagues Section C” and “Commune d’Orbois Section A”. On it the surveyor takes up a line the Napoleonic cadastre already carried in 1831: the boundary crosses the property, and the main house with it. One hundred and six years later, nothing had moved.
The second, the survey at 1:1000 of the measured portion, goes into detail: the main house, three outbuildings, the fences, the spindle hedges, the parcel numbers — and the pond.
One detail is worth noting, because it is characteristic of old sources: the plan writes “Château du Bus”. The poster for the same sale writes “du Bû ou du Bel”; the 1831 land register wrote “du Bûs”. The spelling drifts from one document to the next, and that drift is part of the file.