Following the death of the Viscountess de Boury, then that of her daughter, the Baroness de Meaux, their grandson and son, Charles-Antoine de Meaux, inherited the chateau in 1979. An agronomical engineer, he was the first in the family to take direct charge of the family farm. In 1971, in Chancelade, in the Périgord region in southwestern France, he married Christine Lenglet, the daughter of Lieutenant Commander Jean-Michel Lenglet and Béatrice de Pradel de Lamaze. Lieutenant Commander Lenglet, escaped from France in 1943 to become a fighter pilot in the Free French Air Forces and then in the air arm of the French Navy, the Aéronavale. He died for his country in Indochina at the age of 32.

During the 1970s, the Vexin Français underwent radical change. The old, rural area, which was still regulated by the calendar of agricultural labour, had to change and increasingly take account of its proximity to the Paris conurbation and the new town of Cergy-Pontoise. Charles-Antoine and Christine de Meaux, who had been living at Gadancourt with their four children since 1972, opened the chateau to the public for the first time in the 1980s and developed its use as a marriage venue. In 2013, Christine de Meaux set up the LEAC artistic association, designating the chateau as a “place of exception for contemporary artists” and hosting an annual exhibition to show off the work of contemporary painters, sculptors and other artists in the historic decors of the chateau and the neighbouring church of Saint Martin.

The Chateau de Gadancourt and its park have been classed as historical monuments since 1948.

Bibliography:

• Family archives
• José Gilles, Châteaux et châtelains du Vexin, Histoire et patrimoine du Vexin, 2012