A founder of Swiss origin, Protestant, deputy, friend of the arts: Jean-Simon Voruz bought Briord at auction in 1885 for his grandson, and saved the estate.
When Jean-Simon Voruz acquired Briord at auction on 25 November 1885, the estate was emerging from a quarter-century of storms — the bad business of Count Pelet de Lautrec, the cascade of lawsuits, the mortgage loans from the Crédit Foncier, the scattered sale of the furniture. The château was still standing, but it needed a master to restore it. Jean-Simon Voruz was that man.
An industrialist risen to the summit of Nantes society, a founder of genius, municipal councillor, deputy, consul of Switzerland, holder of the Legion of Honour, he was seventy-five when he entered the courtyard of Briord.
He would live there for eleven years, transforming and restoring it — and it was at Briord that he died, on 25 October 1896, "struck down almost on his feet" on returning from a walk.
The Voruz family came from Protestant German-speaking Switzerland. At the end of the Ancien Régime, two brothers — Pierre-Siméon and Jean-Samuel Voruz — settled at Paimbœuf and Nantes to practise their trade as founders. They supplied the Navy and the shipyards of the Lower Loire. During the Revolution, they continued to supply the government with cannons and muskets from their small Nantes workshops; under the Restoration, they diversified their activity with bell-founding.
On the death of Jean-Samuel in 1827, his two sons took over the business and, two years later, installed it in the Launay district, on Rue Linné. In July 1830, the two brothers took part in the Three Glorious Days and were wounded; Henri, the younger, died soon after.
Jean-Simon, who remained sole head of the business, was born at Nantes. He held the qualification of mechanical engineer and now directed an important copper and bronze foundry, comprising twelve furnaces.
In the following years, Voruz specialised his activity in iron. The development of the railways, of steam engines, of urban metal structures opened a golden age, and Voruz meant to take advantage of it. He set up a second factory on the island of the Prairie au Duc, and made his establishment — under the trading name "J. Voruz Aîné" — the leading metallurgical establishment of the West, employing up to 1,600 workers.
The production catalogue was immense. It cast material for the railways, for agriculture, for artillery — cannons and machine guns, first intended for the American Confederates during the Civil War, then for the French government during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It cast the manhole covers found all over France. And above all, Voruz distinguished himself in art founding.
From his workshops came the candelabra of the Pont Saint-Michel, the staircase of the Passage Pommeraye, the statues of the fountain on the Place Royale, the statue of Adolphe Billault (formerly on the Place Aristide-Briand), that of Saint Anne on the hill of the same name, and the statues adorning the courthouse. Nantes, in its streets and on its squares, bears the imprint of Voruz.
And above all, the exceptional statue of Hebe and Jupiter, the goddess proudly displayed in the courtyard of honour of the château of Briord, whose incredible secret Eric and his friends, the Volontaires de Charette, will not fail to reveal to you during your visit.
Jean-Simon Voruz was not an industrialist isolated in his workshops. He engaged very early in the public life of Nantes. As early as 1840, he was a member of the industrial tribunal (conseil des prud'hommes) of Nantes, which he chaired until 1849. On 18 March 1848, he requested and obtained his French naturalisation — the family had until then kept Swiss nationality.
He then accumulated offices: municipal councillor of Nantes from 1848 to 1865 (deputy mayor 1848-1851), deputy to the Legislative Body from 1859 to 1863, member of the chamber of commerce from 1845, president of that same chamber from 1865 to 1867. From 1877 to 1893, he held the office of consul of the Swiss Confederation at Nantes. He was also one of the founders of the industrial society and school of Nantes, a member of the Société académique, president of the Compagnie de Bretagne and of the study commission for the maritime canal from Nantes to the sea. He owned a model farm at Aigrefeuille and was elected mayor of Aigrefeuille in 1881.
Of Protestant faith, Voruz was a member of the consistory of Nantes from 1847. This fidelity to the Reformed faith handed down by his Swiss family marked his whole life. His decorations accompanied this career: the July Cross, Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1861 (on the occasion of the national exhibition of Nantes), Knight of the foreign orders of the Dannebrog (Denmark) and of Christ (Portugal).
Voruz bought back Briord for his grandson Jean-Baptiste Étienne, an orphaned minor of whom he was the guardian. The notary Jamont had mentioned the estate as early as March 1877, valuing it then at two million francs for an annual revenue of 600,000 francs — before the mortgage loans of the Countess of Lautrec precipitated its devaluation. A first partial acquisition took place on 24 April 1882. It was now the notary of Vue, Maître Jaguelin, who prepared the auction.
Three successive sets of conditions (7 April 1882, 17 May and 8 July 1885) preceded the deed of sale signed on 25 November 1885. Jean-Baptiste Étienne, aged 15 and represented by his guardian and grandfather, became the owner of the château, the woods, the ponds and the métairies — 250 hectares 96 ares — for the sum of 530,000 francs, or about a third of the estimated value.
After deduction of the debts (230,000 francs for the Crédit Foncier, 20,000 for Sieur Padioleau, 18,000 for Francheteau and Civel, 90,000 for Sieur Poirier, and 110,000 already advanced), the Countess of Lautrec in fact received only 62,000 francs. The sale included the agricultural equipment, the livestock, and even the furnishings of the chapel.
During his grandson's minority, it was Jean-Simon Voruz who managed the estate. And although he still owned his town-house on the Rue Linné in Nantes and his seaside villa at La Bernerie-en-Retz, he spent most of his time at Briord. He even had his brother-in-law Auguste Laurant — bookseller, local historian, co-author of a history of Nantes with Alfred Lescadieu in 1836, member of the Archaeological Society since 1860 — write a Historiography of the châtellenie of Briord, a 27-page manuscript dated 1886, drawing on the papers found on the spot.
The Pelet de Lautrec couple had brought to Briord only one notable modification (apart from the enlargement of the chapel and the chaplaincy): the flanking tower of 1866 on the rear façade, with its candle-snuffer roof of medieval inspiration. It was therefore almost the château of Joseph Charette of 1771-1774 that Voruz had before him. He began by completing the decoration of the tower, having the keystones of the door and windows, which had remained rough, carved. Above all, he raised the tower by one storey and had it crowned with a roof of a dome surmounted by a lantern. This transformation, in the very Third Republic style, corrected the squat appearance the tower gave to the façade and inscribed in the stone the real date of the works: "1887" engraved on the pediment of the upper dormer.
On the main façade, Voruz replaced the balustrade of the upper French window with a curved balcony, and reworked the staircase rail. The entrance door was remade, surmounted by a mascaron with a woman's head — the portrait of Emma Louise Voruz, his daughter, mother of Jean-Baptiste Étienne, who died in 1871 at thirty-five. The window keystones, the dormers (new, more ovoid oculi, scrolls in the lower part), the chimney stacks, the cast-iron roof finials: everything was renovated. The two wrought-iron lanterns flanking the entrance door, absent from a photograph of 1899, would be added later.
Inside, the changes were just as striking. In the vestibule, cement tiles replaced the stone paving on the landings and the stair. Above all — and this is the founder's signature — Voruz replaced the staircase rail with a new work of art in wrought iron and welded sheet metal: cannons, powder barrels, trophies and bundles of flags and standards, an antique-style helmet, a blank coat of arms held by two lions, a monogrammed cipher. The motifs of the newel and of the angles are resolutely inspired by Art Nouveau. This rail alone tells the story of the family, of the foundries and of social success. The herringbone parquet floors and the marble fireplaces may have been replaced; there nevertheless remain on the upper floor a few alcove panellings and original fireplaces.
A petrol engine drove a pump that supplied running water; the same generating unit electrified the château. In the basement, a hot-air furnace located beneath the vestibule heated the upper floor through warm-air vents placed in the floors of the dining room, the vestibule and the drawing room.
To carry out these transformations, one can in all probability attribute the role of adviser to the architect Georges Lafont (1847-1924), a great name of Nantes architecture at the turn of the century. Lafont frequented Briord — he is mentioned there in 1895 during the paper chase — and he was present at Voruz's funeral in 1896. Founder and animating force of the artistic and literary society Le Clou, which gathered in his studio on the Rue de la Rosière d'Artois the Nantes bourgeois of the worlds of industry, trade and the liberal professions, Lafont was close to the family: Fernand Voruz, son of Jean-Simon, belonged to it, as did Jean-Baptiste Étienne from 1893.
Alongside Briord, Voruz cultivated other attachments. His model farm at Aigrefeuille, where he was mayor from 1881, embodied his interest in modern agriculture. His seaside villa at La Bernerie-en-Retz — in that Pays de Retz village in full tourist boom at the end of the nineteenth century — was his summer residence. But it was at Briord that he spent most of his time in his final years, as though attached to that land he had bought back for his own.
In 1892, Jean-Simon Voruz gave up the direction of the foundry. A general partnership was created between his son Fernand, Eugène Guillet de La Brosse and two other industrialists under the name F. Voruz fils et Cie. The mechanical division would be sold in 1898 to the firm of La Brosse and Fouché, which would become in 1909 the Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne.
On 25 October 1896, Jean-Simon Voruz died at Briord, "struck down almost on his feet" on returning from a walk. His body was brought back to the Rue Linné in Nantes. The funeral took place on 30 October in the presence of the family, the president of the commercial court, several deputy mayors and municipal councillors, elected officials, artists, and representatives of the factory's employees. After the pastor's address at the home, a ceremony was held at the Protestant temple of Nantes, followed by burial at the Miséricorde cemetery, in the family plot near the Protestant quarter.
The local press paid tribute to him. "For nearly half a century, M. Voruz had been at the head of Nantes industry. A liberal spirit in every sense of the word, he enjoyed universal regard and inspired in all who knew him the deepest esteem. He had given that spectacle, worthy of admiration and sympathy, of a worker who had risen by his efforts alone: he was truly the son of his own works."
He left a considerable fortune — nearly 500,000 francs (the equivalent of about 17 million euros in 2026), not including the value of the two factories (a million and a half, or a further 45 million euros). His heirs were his son Fernand (at the head of the business), his daughter Berthe (a painter), and his grandson Jean-Baptiste Étienne. But Briord did not enter the succession: it was henceforth the exclusive domain of the latter.
In the long history of Briord, Jean-Simon Voruz holds a particular place. He resided there only eleven years — from 1885 to 1896 — less than any of the other great owners of the estate. But it was he who saved its future by buying it back at auction for his grandson; it was he who gave the château its definitive external appearance (the domed lantern of the tower, the mascaron of the entrance door, the staircase rail with its military trophies); it was he who equipped it with the modern comforts that would make it, for half a century, a house worthy of its time.
And then there is that other legacy, more symbolic: the first legible engraved stone of the tower — "1887" — marks the date when Briord, after seventy years of precarious lives (the Continental Blockade, the Dubois-Violette bankruptcy, the Pantin transition, the Pelet scandals), recovered the stability of a family, a fortune and a project. When Voruz died "almost on his feet" on returning from a walk on his land, one 25 October, the wind blowing on the rear façade carried the dead leaves of the park down into the moats that Pierre Landais had dug four hundred and twenty-seven years earlier. Between Landais and Voruz, the chain of the centuries holds — and it is, among other things, through the will of this Nantes founder that it was not broken.