Château de Montigny

Montigny was horse country long before the stud farm — Pesche already noted in 1836 that it "raises rather fine foals and young horses, the land being particularly suited to this kind of agricultural industry". At the Blosserie farm, the Lalouet family was among the oldest equestrian families of the Alençon plain, breeding the stallions Hertz, Képi and Ottoman as well as the broodmares Ida and Ordelia, among other mares of merit. The commune's best pastures still carry their names: le Parc des Gazinières, le Type de la Plaine, le Parc de la Butte, the meadows of la Blosserie, the paddocks along the Sarthon and the great park of Lougueuil.

Ernest le Comte, a lawyer in Le Mans, member of the Sarthe departmental council for the canton of La Fresnaye-sur-Chédouet from 1897 to 1907 and passionate about horses, built the horseshoe-shaped stud farm in 1890 to house a stable dedicated to trotters. Its original loose boxes are still in place, as is the wrought-iron footbridge linking two buildings, used to keep watch over the broodmare stables. The stud also keeps its carriages, still brought out for events.

The horse "Postllo" born in 1886 won the Rouen derby in 1889, as did "Qui Vive" born in 1887 who won the same Rouen derby in 1890 in mounted trot. This event is now called the Prix du Cornulier for mounted trotting and the Grand Prix d'Amérique for harnessed trotting, created in 1919.

The stable reached its peak in the early 1890s: "Qui-Vive" — a brown bay by Tigris out of Suzon, with a kilometre record of 1'37" and an approved stallion in the trotter stud book — won the Grand Prix de Vincennes in 1891. In 1892, a history of French trotting published in Le Figaro counted six of M. Lecomte's horses among "the most celebrated": Qui-Vive, Quarantaine, Oriflamme, Orphée, Obéron and Othello.

The stud is currently operated by Mr Daniel Boittin for breeding and stud services. He produces sport horses for the cavalry fanfare of the Republican Guard as well as for hunting with hounds, and draught horses for driving, especially for ceremonies.

Ernest Le Comte died in 1911 without a successor to maintain the stable.

A small corner of this prestigious complex hosts the local town hall.

It followed shortly after the stud farm. The geological section drawn up for Mr Le Comte, kept at the château, dates the work precisely: begun on 28 June 1896, the borehole was finished on 26 February 1897, at 100.85 metres, in granite. It was the work of Édouard Lippmann & Cie, civil engineers; pumping tests yielded 5,440 litres an hour.

A small building, about a hundred metres north of the stud, houses the borehole: water extraction is provided by a reciprocating pump driven by a gasifier engine — a patented wood-gas producer made in Bonnétable, in the Sarthe. You can see the gas-generating hearth and the single-cylinder motor driving the pump; thus the water arrived at the foot of the water tower, built of stone and brick and topped with a slate lantern.

This engine also produced electrical energy stored in accumulator batteries, kept in a small adjoining room. Electric lighting thus existed at the castle and in the stables long before the public network reached the commune.

The water tower, built at the same time as the stables, provided the horses with running water which, brought to the foot of the water tower from the borehole, was propelled upwards by a horse-drawn carousel; under a trap door, the gear train of this mechanism can still be seen.

Ernest Le Comte thus laid on running water for his horses before the castle itself had any.

Built of brick and stone, the orangery opens wide glazed bays to the south between masonry piers, under an arched pediment flanked by stone balls.

Its roof and ceiling needed renewing: this was done in 2021, and a rose, the emblem of the de Müllenheim family, took the place left empty at the centre of the pediment.

The former parish church of Montigny, under the patronage of the Virgin: its parish gathering was held on 8 September, feast of the Nativity, "from time immemorial". Deconsecrated during the 19th century and since absorbed into the estate, its pointed-arch openings belong to the earliest Gothic, its interior was very plainly decorated and its steeple is a much-shortened spire. It now serves as a woodshed; the remains of a vault of small wooden slats can still be made out inside, one beam carved with a floral motif, along with a few traces of wall paintings.

Set slightly apart, the old cemetery keeps a cross and a funerary monument in micaceous Hertré granite, raised to the memory of Hippolyte Le Comte, who died around 1821.

The dovecote most likely dates from the 15th or 16th century, well before the present castle. Its cylindrical tower carries a conical tiled roof, pierced by a dormer and topped with a slate lantern.