Attractions and Places To See around Beauchêne - Top 7

The Saint-Barthélémy church dates from the 12th century but was restored and enlarged in the 17th and then in the 19th century. The elegant bell tower, formed of a square tower, becomes octagonal at 20 m high. Small loophole-type windows light the belfry. It is topped by a dome, itself topped by a campanile and a lantern. It is considered a case study by schools of architecture. This church also contains several movable objects classified as Historic Monuments including Christ on the Cross, a polychrome wooden statue from the 17th century, two oils on canvas from the 17th century, a funerary plaque from 1674 by Michel de Verthamon, Knight of Malta, in stone and marble (epitaph in Latin and coat of arms) and a bronze bell, tuned in F, from 1580.

In 1133, Geoffroi, Viscount of Châteaudun, founded a priory dependent on the abbey of Tiron, in the diocese of Chartres, in this place. When he died, his wife, Helvise de Mondoubleau, built the church around 1140. The church is formed of a long nave ending in a semicircular apse. It has retained several narrow bays, with a semicircular arch, very flared towards the inside. In the 16th century, a chapel was added to the south of the church, a paneling with exposed tie beams above the nave and the choir, and a mass of carpentry to the west which supports the spire of the bell tower on pointed arches. The choir has a trefoiled piscina from the 14th century. In 1660, Jean Gry, a carpenter from Vendôme, executed the altarpiece and the following year, Pierre Janvier, a painter from Mondoubleau, painted the Resurrection which decorates it. The church houses two funerary slabs, one of a priest who died in 1658, the other of François Leboulx, Lord of Chauvellières, who died in 1691.

This church contains 14th century wall paintings. These paintings were discovered in 1895. They formerly occupied the entire width of the western wall of the nave. The central part was destroyed following the renovation of the door. The left side represented paradise. Of the bust of Christ, in a trilobed medallion, which occupied the center, there remains only a fragment of the cruciform halo. The rest of the composition is divided into rectangular compartments, each enclosing, in the surviving part, a figure of a crowned chosen one. On the right, hell is represented by a cauldron in which several characters are immersed, including a pope, a bishop, a monk, a king, a queen. Above, a woman with her legs apart. On the right, an enormous horned demon sticks out its tongue. On the left, another carries a basket filled with the damned and is about to plunge a woman into the cauldron. Construction periods: 14th century

The church has a very pretty Renaissance-style choir entrance. Certain stained glass windows, the woodwork of the choir, the altarpieces and the font are classified. The current church, rectangular in plan, replaced a 12th century building. The flat bedside and the north wall, equipped with Romanesque windows and slightly projecting buttresses, date from this period. It was rebuilt and probably enlarged in the first half of the 16th century. It was then covered with beautiful paneling, the beams of which bear the arms of the Vove, lords of Saint-Agil. The church is also flanked to the south by a seignorial chapel of two bays opening onto the nave with two molded semi-circular arches: its ribbed vaults, with eight ribs leading to the four peaks of a central diamond, are each decorated with four sculpted pendant keys, one of which also bears the arms of the Vove; the date 1547 can be read on its door. The church is currently preceded by a bell tower built in 1886 by Mr. Travaillard, an architect in Saint-Calais. A window to the south of the choir has preserved a partly restored 16th century stained glass window, representing Saint-Agil and Saint-Fiacre, and one of the windows of the seigneurial chapel has another, representing the Nativity, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi; the other window of this chapel has a modern stained glass window retaining some old fragments in the speckles. The choir was decorated with woodwork including an entrance arcade surmounted by a crucifix, stalls, a communion table and an altarpiece, the latter dated 1734. We can also point out a font decorated with balusters and of a skull (1552), the poetic epitaph of Catherine-Geneviève de Verthamont (1740), a painting representing a martyr (17th century), a Louis XV console and a Venetian glass chandelier.”

Around 1240, the Benedictines, who had a priory within the walls of the castle of Mondoubleau, having had to abandon it, settled near Choue. Of the buildings, only the chapel remains. The western gable is pierced with a double archivolt door in third point and projecting cord, chamfered. Above, a bay was flanked by two six-lobed oculi. On the western part of the southern gutter wall, a door gave access to a small room which could have been the lower room of a square tower, perhaps a bell tower. Inside, the walls were plastered.