Five centuries of one house.
Lords and lawyers, farmers and barons. The documented thread of Château de Mirande, from a Mâconnais fief to a private home.
From a Mâconnais fief to a private home.
Mirande — known in the old records by two names, Mirande and le Buisson — was a small seigneurial fief in the Mâconnais, dependent on the barony of Montbellet. Its first known lords, the Chassipol family, appear at the end of the fifteenth century. The seigneurial house itself was built around 1660, under Louis XIV, and still carries the marks of that age.
Defended by walls and towers pierced with small firing loops — several still visible today — it was, over the centuries, a manor, a noble residence, a working estate, and most recently a private home open to guests. The gatehouse bears a chronogram dated 1824. The older stones remain in the tower, the dovecote and the porch.
This page has been rewritten to match the historian's report you provided (L'histoire de la maison seigneuriale de Mirande). Note: the previous text described an 11th-century Cluny priory — the report does not support that, so it has been corrected to the documented record (a noble fief, with the house built c. 1660). If you have a separate source for an earlier monastic origin, send it and I'll reconcile the two.
The first lords
The earliest known holders of the fief — variously called Mirande and le Buisson — are the Chassipol family, a Mâconnais line whose name signified an officer of justice. The fief was held under the powerful barony of Montbellet.
The house is built
Under Louis XIV — perhaps during the troubles of the Fronde — the seigneurial house of le Buisson is built, defended by walls and towers pierced with small firing loops still visible today. By 1660 it is one of five fiefs for which the Baron of Montbellet does homage to the King.
The Bordet family & the chapel
Jacques Bordet, a Mâcon lawyer, holds Mirande; a private chapel beside the house is recorded in the pastoral visit of 1705, set "in the corner of a small garden." The estate passes through the Bordet family into the eighteenth century.
The Revolution passes through
During the Mâconnais peasant insurrection, the owner Moiroud, warned that his house was to be sacked, hurried to remove his belongings — only for six men to arrive and leave with 36 livres and his green coat. The house itself was spared.
A new century, a new face
The estate is bought in 1817 by Claude Bernard, a Mâcon lawyer, for 10,150 francs. The gatehouse carries a chronogram dated 1824 — its figure 4 carved in reverse — and the buildings take much of their present shape across the nineteenth century.
The Protat years, then the Baron
The Protat family — winegrowers, with a mayor of Montbellet among them — hold Mirande from the late nineteenth century. In 1944 the estate passes to Baron Amaury de l'Epine.
If you have the Resistance-era or wartime anecdote from the de l'Epine period, add it here — it would make a strong story. (The historian's report notes the 1944 sale but no detail.)
Towards the present
The de l'Epine family sells Mirande to Nina and Matthias Roser in 2011. In 2018 the estate is acquired by Benedikt Münch — the beginning of what the family came to call, with a small smile, the Castle Project.
A house open to guests
Mirande is a private, family-owned home that welcomes guests — for long stays, for weddings, and for the occasional festive gathering. Benedikt lives on the estate and runs it day to day; the restoration continues, room by room.