Rene Bignonet Rochefort En Terre
Annie Lisle Rochefort En TerreThey share their memories of the Klots family and the mark they left on Rochefort-en-Terre (only in french).
Vestiges Château Rochefort-en-TerreBefore becoming the property of painter Alfred Klots, Château de Rochefort-en-Terre belonged to Doctor François Juhel. A doctor in the navy, he bought the ruins of the fortified castle in 1842 and converted the former outbuildings into his home and practice.
This excerpt from Michel de Galzain’s “En passant par Rochefort-en-Terre” portrays a strange and astonishing character: “The doctor consulted in a huge room, filled with retorts, physics objects, jars, glass balls, and at the corner of the fireplace stood impassively two living owls asleep in an inner dream. His maid was a black maid (…) and his helper a strange, lame, hunchbacked character; Dr. Juhel called him “the devil”, and he was called “Dr. Faust”. “Perhaps he was referring to the melodramatic adventures that had brought him to the brink of death on several occasions under unbelievable conditions. A naval surgeon, taken prisoner by an Indian tribe after a shipwreck off the coast of Brazil, he had escaped and arrived in Martinique, only to fall victim to a dreadful yellow fever epidemic. On the verge of returning to France, at the last minute he gave up his place on the outbound frigate La Doris to a colleague. The frigate capsized in Brest harbor. The entire crew perished. The doctor’s family, unaware of his transfer, held a service for him on the day of his return. The maid who opened the door for him while his family were in church nearly died of emotion!
Rochefort En Terre Et Chateau 1webOn the advice of painters he had met in Paris, Alfred Klots discovered the town in 1904 and fell under its spell. After several stays, he acquired the medieval castle enclosure in 1907 and quickly became part of village life. When Alfred Klots bought the estate, he decided to convert the outbuildings into a manor house. In the 1920s, he salvaged Flamboyant Gothic and Renaisance-style dormer windows from the Keralio manor house in Noyal-Muzillac, which was being demolished at the time, and incorporated them into his new building… An interactive tour led by Lisa Wheeler, a member of the Association du Château de Rochefort-en-Terre and cousin of the Klots family, takes you back in more detail to the life of the Klots family in Rochefort-en-Terre. Current residents of Rochefort-en-Terre, they first came here in 1975 and share the same strong attachment to the château and their adopted village as their family did before them. A 5-step audio tour with text and photos (in French and English).
The property was bought by the Conseil Général du Morbihan in 1978, then sold to the commune of Rochefort-en-Terre in 2013. Today, the Naia Museum is located in the grounds of the Château de Rochefort-en-Terre. This museum of fantasy arts, created by Patrice Hubert and Man Van H in 2015, arouses the curiosity and emotion of visitors. It is named after the witch Naïa, who is said to have lived in the castle’s underground passages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
