History of the Manoir Saint Thomas The “Mail” in our address perpetuates the memory of a priory which was founded in 1107 by Hugh 1st, the Lord of Amboise, but he gave it shortly afterwards to the Abbey of Pont-Levoy. It comprised an estate which had one house (known as No. 1) which paid rent of 5 sols, 6 deniers each year on Saint Stephen’s day, 26 December. (Note 1). This belonged, at the beginning of the 18th century, to Jean Rouer, an official in the King’s Household, and a member of an old family of Amboise which had already provided several mayors of Amboise, amongst them Jean Rouer (1658 – 1661) and later, in 1669, Alexandre Rouer, the Lord of the Chateau Gaillard. Jean Rouer was married, on 12th February 1685, in the “chapel of the priory of Saint Thomas of Amboise” to Catherine Pommiers who bore him at least one daughter, Marie-Antoinette. According to her marriage contract of 29th May 1726 her Dowry was “the building situated in the main market-place of this town, at the priory of Saint Thomas”. On 3rd June of the following year the wedding of Antoinette Rouer and “Francois de Boyneau, Lord of Clouzeaux” took place in the church of Saint Florentin. (Note 3) He too was of an old family, Gilles de Boyneau having been ennobled in 1619 when he was the mayor of Amboise. (Note 4). On 13th March 1776, Antoinette Rouer, by now the widow of Francois de Boyneau, sold to Jacques Lhomme de la Pinsonnière “a house situated in the main market-place of this town, at the priory of Saint Thomas, consisting of two main buildings. The first, with a courtyard in front of it, was entered through a large porch and consisted of a hallway, a large hall, a sitting room, a corridor, two high ceilinged rooms with fireplaces and two vaulted cellars approached via a shed. In the second building was the kitchen and some storerooms leading directly into the street via a corridor. The whole property was enclosed with walls and was bordered, on the North side, by the river "La Masse” (the river La Masse, today). The main
elements of this description can be found, without modification, in all the conveyances up to 1858 and the survey of 1808 confirms them. Nowadays access to the two vaulted cellars is under an outbuilding which has replaced the shed of long ago. The restorations carried out in 1986 revealed their ancient, and very thick, walls behind a brick partition wall. Beneath some wallpaper covering the right-hand wall of the corridor was found an imaginary drawing of weaponry bearing a date – 1773. (Note 5). This proved the age of the building which was rebuilt at the end of the 19th century and took its present form then. Jacques Lhomme de la Pinsonnière, who appeared in person at the electoral assembly of the Touraine nobility in 1789 (Note 6), as he was the Lord of Villiers (Note 7), left the Manoir at Amboise in his will, after his death on 5 February 1813, to one of his nephews – Amedée-André Lhomme de la Pinsonnière (Note 8). He was living at La Petite Carrée at Saint Symphorien when, on 23 September 1837, he re-sold the building to Porphyre Trouvé, a merchant. It then passed into the possession of Armand Lesourd, a public works contractor of Amboise, who sold it on 12 July 1858 to Jean-Francois-Brice Pathault and Marie-Louise Leclaire (Note 9), and it remained in the possession of their descendants until 1986. This family came from Blois originally, but one Louis Pathault came to live at Amboise where he married, in July 1661, Francoise Carré, one of whose ancestors, Denis Carré, had been the mayor from 1572-1574. After the restoration of the monarchy, Jean Pathault-Habert founded a blanket factory, which prospered and made the family’s fortune, but this business came to an end in about 1920, when on 20 April, some of the buildings were transferred to Mr. Gounin (Note 11). In 1881, the house of Mail Saint-Thomas passed into the ownership of the grand-daughter of the founder of the business, Adeline Pathault, the wife of Raoul Boileau. It is thought, and accords with their family tradition, that these were the last owners of the property to carry out major alterations and refurbishment and we know that the painted beams of the main drawing room bear, in one corner, the signature “Ripault 1887 Tours”. This room has a neo- Renaissance, carved wood mantelpiece, a masterpiece of the cabinetmaker’s art, which is signed “Bernou, of Tours”. In the hall there are two pillars with capitals, finely carved with foliage. The chimney-hood is bordered with pilasters, decorated with circles above which is a similarly decorated dental cornice. The rectangular frontage of the chimney-hood is divided into lozenges, each bearing a fleur de lys. Stone fireplaces, of which traces have been found on the masonry of the walls heated the wing beside the street and another wing on what is now the garden terrace. The triangular gable facing the square was decorated with winged dragons at the base of the gable ends. All the wall openings (doors and windows) were remodelled and re-carved on site. It seems that they wanted to increase the height of the house by an extra storey accessed by a spiral staircase in the corbelled turret in
the angle on the North-West side of the house. This pastiche of a 15th century apartment has already passed its first century. We see, therefore, how the history of the house does not lack interest, even though its façade and style has changed over time. Major restoration in 1986 has now revitalised the house for a different purpose – as a gastronomic establishment under the protection of Saint Thomas 1. Departmental Archives. Acte Legendre d’Amboise, 13 March 1776 2. Chevalier. Archives of the commune of Amboise (1874) page 297 3. Information supplied by our colleague, Pierre Robert 4. Carré de Busserolle. Armorial Records of Touraine, page 180 5. With thanks to Madame Bernadette Chabreton, who provided a copy of this drawing 6. Memoirs of the Archaeological Society of the Touraine, volume 10, page 98 7. From Villiers, volume 5 of “Old Houses of Touraine”, page 155 8. Departmental Archives. The minutes of M. Bourreau (Amboise) 12 February 1812. 9. Conveyance of 12 July 1858, lent by Monsieur Brice Pathault 10. “A Family of Blois in the 16th and 17th Centuries – The Pathaults” (Blois 1957) by M/R Souty. P. 62 11. Information from the research of Monsieur Michel Maître