From Séris de Rezay in 1225 to Eric Peters today, discover eight centuries of history through the women and men who made the Land of Briord.
It was at the beginning of the 13th century, in 1225, that the first known lord of the land of Briord settled here.
The lord Séris de Rezay would be followed by many others who, through their temperament, their political role, their extravagance or their will to develop the estate, took part in the rise of the Land of Briord over 8 centuries.
The lord Séris de Rezay is, in the present state of research, the oldest identified holder of the Land of Briord. He was vidame of Rezay and Le Pallet.
One of the following masters of the place would be Sevestre de Rezay, lord of Brains. We know that Sevestre de Rezay married Catherine Cathus in 1389. He paid homage to the lord of Les Huguetières for part of his land of Briord in 1390.
Martin de REZAY, born in 1410, was Lord of Rezay, of Briord and of many other lands. This influence enabled him to obtain from Duke John V of Brittany in 1437 the elevation of the Land of Briord to the rank of a seigneury of high justice, a founding act for the importance of Briord in the following centuries.
Martin de Rezay sold the châtellenie of Briord around the year 1444 to Jean LABBÉ, chamberlain of Duke Francis I of Brittany. Jean LABBÉ obtained on 20 July 1445 new letters patent confirming the high-justice status of the Land of Briord.
Pierre LANDAIS is one of the most famous holders of the Land of Briord. To him we owe the building of its fortifications, whose moats are still visible today. He entered the service of the Duke of Brittany as keeper of the wardrobe, then became treasurer and receiver general of Brittany. In 1460, he created the University of Brittany at Nantes. All-powerful from 1481 to 1485, he strove to defend the independence of the duchy against the manœuvres of the King of France. Condemned following a coup d'état, Pierre Landais was hanged on 19 July 1485 at Nantes.
Joseph Charette de Briord is one of the most important figures of the Land of Briord, since to him we owe, in 1770, the building of the château we know today. Ten years later, from 1780, he had the chapel built, dedicated in his time to the Virgin Mary and then, later, in the 19th century, to Saint Germain. He also had the chaplaincy of Briord built at the same period. The latest discoveries made by Eric Peters and the companion stonemasons during the great restoration project of the chapel, begun in January 2026, tend to show that the chapel may have been inaugurated in 1789! — since a side entrance, hitherto unknown, bears this date carved in the stone of a triangular pediment.
The Charette family, very influential and allied to the great trading houses of the Loire capital, would provide seven mayors to the city of Nantes over the course of history. The fortune of Joseph Charette de Briord, in the mid-18th century, was close to 200,000 livres — that is, about 3,500,000 euros today.
He was one of the most successful winegrowers of the region: the estate had 36 parcels of vines producing up to 240 barrels a year, that is, more than 1,200 hectolitres.
After the Charette, the Land of Briord passed to the Dubois-Violette, a family of Nantes merchants. Jean-Anne Dubois-Violette, the father, then his son Jean-Anne-Thomas, marked the first third of the estate's 19th century. A merchant and partner of Thomas Dobrée in trade with China — the voyages of the ship Fils de France to Canton — an entrepreneur engaged in several ventures, Jean-Anne-Thomas knew a singular trajectory, made of boldness and reverses. From 1830 he took to agronomic experiments, but, penniless after a second bankruptcy, he had to give up the estate on 4 November 1833. With the Dubois-Violette began the first attempt to make of Briord a modern working estate.
On 4 November 1833, Louis-Julien Pantin de La Guère, husband of Marie-Zénobie Jaillard de La Maronnière, bought Briord and its 175 hectares from Jean-Anne-Thomas Dubois-Violette for 500,000 francs. The Pantin de La Guère kept Briord for only one generation. It was through their daughter that the estate would change hands: on 17 June 1850, Mathilde Pantin de La Guère married Count Michel-Adolphe Pelet de Lautrec, and Briord entered the marriage portion.
Of all the masters of Briord, Count Michel-Adolphe Pelet de Lautrec is surely the most novelistic. Born at Fort-de-France in 1827, a Martinican by birth, he became master of Briord not by purchase or inheritance, but through his marriage, on 17 June 1850, to Mathilde Pantin de La Guère. An officer by vocation, he fought at the siege of Gaeta (1860-1861) to defend the King of Naples, Francis II, and he was received by Pope Pius IX. A châtelain of flamboyant temperament, he embodies on his own a good number of the figures of 19th-century France. His time precedes the sale of the estate in 1885.
On 25 November 1885, the estate of Briord — the château and 250 hectares — was sold at auction for 530,000 francs to Jean-Simon Voruz (1810-1896), a famous Nantes industrialist and founder, acting on behalf of his minor grandson, Jean-Baptiste Étienne, then aged fifteen. Founder of the Passage Pommeraye and of countless iron and cast-iron works of the Greater West, member of the Protestant consistory of Nantes, deputy and president of the study commission for the maritime canal from Nantes to the sea, Voruz is one of the great names of 19th-century Nantes industry. At Briord, he raised up an estate emerging from a quarter-century of storms: he had the great tower raised in 1887 and left his mark everywhere — railings, wrought-iron balconies, cast-iron plaques. Master of Briord until his death in 1896, he handed the estate to his grandson.
Grandson of Jean-Simon Voruz, Jean-Baptiste Étienne became the last master of Briord of the old period. Nicknamed "Little Étienne", he made the estate, for nearly half a century, one of the great centres of hunting with hounds of the Pays de Retz, until 1937. To him we owe the building of the water tower in 1907, after the death of his grandfather. A well-known Nantes figure, he died on 22 October 1949 at his town-house on the Rue Linné in Nantes, at the age of seventy-nine. With him closed a chapter of eight centuries of the history of Briord.
Inheriting from Jean-Baptiste Étienne, who died without recognised children, Briord passed to Robert Say, cousin and secretary of the deceased, by testamentary designation. Briord would be kept, without any real use or development, within the family fold until 2021.
It was on a very sunny morning in July 2021 that Eric Peters, a French entrepreneur and lover of history, first set foot on the Land of Briord. Having sought for many years an estate in western France, an authentic witness of the great events that transformed the country from the Revolution to the Roaring Twenties, he fell utterly under the charm of Briord. A forbidden, forgotten estate, in chronic want of upkeep, he grasped the urgency of the situation and vowed never to leave the place again, even after his death.
Briord must be saved, Briord must be protected and, above all, Briord must be Shared. In the mind of its new owner, the Land of Briord is therefore not a possession, it is a Mission.
From the month of February 2022, when the place officially became the property of Eric Peters, the extraordinary Land of Briord came back to life and opened to the greatest number, free of charge at least once a month or during great events, animated by an army of volunteers whom Eric named the Volontaires de Charette.
Under the direction of a heritage architect and craftsmen specialising in the restoration of historic monuments, the great projects of Briord were launched.
These would be the restoration of a 19th-century dovecote, of the great conservatory kitchen-garden and orchard, of the marvellous 18th-century chapel fallen into ruin, and the rehabilitation of the north tower, to which would be restored its soul and its great campanile, the majestic visual signature of the château of Briord for 150 years.
In order to guarantee the continuity of his project, Eric Peters would in 2025 give his estate of Briord to a foundation, the Eric Peters Fund for the Preservation of Heritage, so that the Mission of Restore - Preserve - Share the Land of Briord may continue after him and forever.
Eric is convinced that generations of "missionaries" will continue after him, guided by the single and beautiful ambition of making Briord THE terrestrial lighthouse of the Pays de Retz, accessible to all, without condition of means.