Parc de Bourran

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Parc de Bourran, August 2018
Buorran Castle, garden side
Water tower
Neo-Gothic arch bridge
"Dead tree" made of concrete: water supply to the waterfall

The Parc de Bourran ( Bourran Park ) was laid out in the last quarter of the 19th century around Bourran Castle as an English landscape garden.

Geographical location

The park was formerly on the edge, today within the municipality of Mérignac .

history

In 1868 the banker Léopold Piganeau from Bordeaux bought the Bourran winery together with his father-in-law Emile Ravesies. They had the existing manor house demolished and a new country palace built by the architect Jules Lafargue . The garden was not built until two decades later. The garden architect was Louis Lucy Le Breton . In 1896 , shortly before his death, the Société d'hoticulture awarded him a gold medal for the two parks he created at Bourran and Dulamon .

Léopold Piganeau died in 1898 and work on the garden was then stopped. Compared to the original plan, some things have therefore probably never been implemented. Some of the equipment may have disappeared in the meantime, because the facility is now largely used as a city ​​park and partly as a school sports area.

investment

The park was 18  hectares . The Devèze flows through the area, the castle is on a hill above. The stream was dammed into a lake. There are three islands in it, the largest is connected to the shore by a bridge. There is a tea house on the island. This part of the garden is very bushy and wooded today. A large, almost circular path leads around the lake. There are also smaller, designed areas. Part of the historical complex has now been changed by adding a sports field for the school that the castle now uses and a children's playground.

Staffage buildings
  • A water tower has been preserved to operate the fountain, which presents itself to the outside in a historical style in forms of classicism and baroque .
  • In the southern area of ​​the park there is a small waterfall, which gets its water from a “tree stump” and a “dead branch”: everything made of reinforced concrete.
  • At the western end of the lake there is an arch bridge with a neo-Gothic tower at one end. Today the tower is so ingrown that it can only be seen from the path that leads over the bridge.

Worth knowing

Bourran Castle is listed as a cultural monument in the French register of monuments .

The same architect, Jules Lafargue, also built his country palace in Dulamon for Léopold Piganeau's brother, Gustave Piganeau .

literature

  • Ferdinand Werner : A forgotten garden architect: Louis Lucy Le Breton and the palace gardens of Majolan and Bourran . In: Die Gartenkunst 2018/2, pp. 243–260.

Remarks

  1. ↑ In summer 2018, the vegetation was so overgrown that the island was closed to visitors.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner, p. 243.
  2. ↑ Werner, p. 258.
  3. ↑ Werner, p. 248.
  4. ↑ Werner, p. 258.
  5. ↑ Werner, p. 260.
  6. ↑ Werner, pp. 259f.
  7. ↑ Werner, pp. 258, 60.
  8. ↑ entry of Castle Bourran in the monument list .

Coordinates: 44 ° 50 ′ 18 "  N , 0 ° 37 ′ 53.1"  W.