According to legend, the Lord of Percy, first ruler of these lands, was in fact the personal chef of the Conqueror. (Birth and tradition call upon us to be worthy, nine centuries later, of these royal origins). At Hastings, it is said, he felled a few Saxons with a colender spoon (chinois or conical strainers were apparently unknown at the time) and for this signal feat of arms, he was dubbed a baron. Our search has not enabled us to discover whether once a baron, William the Conqueror sent him back to his pots and pans, or gave him distinctly less worthy tasks like skewering Saxons, or pouring pitch on the Bretons...

What is certain, however, is that the first Lord of Percy, at the height of his power, established himself in England and founded the illustrious family of the Percys, Dukes of Northumberland, while retaining ownership of his French lands. It is he who, among other things, founded the Abbey of Juaye-Mondaye, five kilometres away from Audrieu, which was rebuilt in the 18th century. (We warmly recommend a visit : it is the only specimen, with the Abbey of St Etienne of Caen, of 18th century religious architecture in the area).

It would appear that, at Audrieu itself, his residence was extremely modest: it was a feudal « motte » or mound of which the site still exists on the far side of the road, beyond the avenue. A few years ago excavations disclosed the exact plan of the building. It was a half timbered building (the ancestor of those one can see all over the region) surrounded by a deep moat, and enclosing a vast court-yard and a few serfs’ hovels. Whenever some warlike urge suddenly gripped the Lord of Percy, or the neighbouring « motte », the peasants took refuge in this court. To kill time of an evening, the serfs entrenched in their respective « mottes », often within the range of their bows, shot arrows at one another, for the most part harmlessly. The rest of the time they cleared and dressed the land and gave it its typical pattern of hedges and sunken roads we still see today. They also built those magnificent churches which are scattered over our countryside (Audrieu in the first place, but also Secqueville, Norrey, Crépon, Tour, Creully, Bernières, etc...)

The Normans from the 11th to the 13th centuries were certainly the leading force of civilization of their age. May our English friends forgive us; but if they had not come, where would they be today!

Then came that sinister Hundred Years’ War, which devastated Normandy, and during which local history came to a standstill. Only at the end of the end of the 15th century did those Percys, who remained in Normandy, call attention to themselves by replacing the feudal « motte » with a proper castle, of which there remains an outbuilding and the two existing wings of the château, refurbished after the fashion of the day, when the central wing was put up in the 18th century.

Another Séran was talked about in her day because of the tragic fate of her pupil, the Duke of Enghien.

During the French Revolution, Audrieu was confiscated by the Revolutionary Government, and put up for sale ( the public notice dated 9 Floréal An 3, also in the archives, is evidence of this ). Its owner at the time was Camille Léonor, who was away fighting in the royalist forces of the Prince of Condé, or rather spinning a web of intrigue, for everyone knew that these forces were only fearsome in name. With the Restoration, his solid Norman common sense took over again, and after a series of complicated lawsuits, he recovered his property, from which only the arms on the pediment of the château had disappeared. It is partly to honour his memory that his arms have been taken as a symbol (on the left, those of the Percys, and on the right, of the Sérans, with a Baron’s coronet ).

Thus Léonor was the last Séran, Baron of Audrieu. He left a daughter, Henriette, through whom in direct line, the property has desended to the present owners.

Like the feudal « motte » during the Hundred Years’ War, the present day château was very nearly destroyed at the time of the Normandy Landings in 1944. For six weeks, it was in the Nomans' land between enemy lines, and repeatedly attacked by British and Canadians from one side, and by German Panzer division from the other. It was hit by 27 105mm shells. Several anti-tank shells shot it through and through. But Caen stone proved tougher, the building resisted valiantly to the punishment, and there are now only a few traces of that heroic and bloody period.

It claimed the biggest number of innocent victims among the trees of the grounds. Many had to be cut down, and those which remain are all riddled with shell splinters. You can see big bulges, and deep gashes rimmed with lip-shaped excrescences on the trunks of the largest ones. Those are the traces of deep wounds. Shrapnel penetrated the wood to a depth of 40 centimetres. Every year, even now, some of them die from the long struggle against the cancer which eats away at them.

That is the end of this little page of local history. May it remind the reader of the long tradition bound up with this site; and of the royal chef who founded this house!