In the census of New Converts of 1699, it is noted that Daniel Villaboy (60 years old) lives in Villaboy with his children. In the old deeds, the surname of Villaboy, Villeboy, Villebois, but also Bireboy is often mentioned. During the siege of 1621, the troops of the Marshal of Lesdiguières had settled nearby on 23 July, the position slightly dominating the village.
The present building, which will not go down in history for its architectural quality, would have been built by Louis Fauchey, for his young son, Charles. Originally from Castillon-la-Bataille, this rich Bordeaux family had several marriages in the second half of the 18th century with the Balguerie, Bordeaux shipowners of Clairacaise origin. Son of the first marriage of Pierre Fauchey and Anne Balguerie, Louis Fauchey had first married Anne Louise Pradel, in 1831, of whom he had Charles, then in 1839 Henriette Irma de Laguehay of whom he had two daughters. After Charles' death, Bireboy was sold to Cécile (1852-...) and Henriette de Bellecombe (1854-1929), sisters and bachelors. We are well acquainted with the latter for the work she did as a historian on Clairac; in particular thanks to the book on her Clairacais ancestors: Les Denis, une famille bourgeoise de l'Agenais, published in 1894 at the Librairie Fischbacher.
While the ladies of Bellecombe had generations of fervent Huguenots among their ancestors, they yielded to the sirens of Rome, notably through Alice de Lartigue who obtained their conversion and had them baptized in 1912 in her castle of Marith; the two sisters were then more than 60 years old!
It was probably Clairac's parish priest, Abbé Urbain Cambournac, who then bought Bireboy, where Abbé Brajon - who succeeded him - recalled that he had organised the first post-war Catholic fairs. In 1951, the whole property was bought by the municipality of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, which set up a holiday camp there, as lively as it was noisy; “Merci maman, merci papa. Tous les ans, je voudrais que ça r'commence, You kaïdi aïdi aïda (Thank you mom, thank you dad. Every year, I'd like it to start again, You kaïdi aïdi aïda. French song).”
Henriette de Bellecombe (1854-1929) belongs to a line of families from Lot-&-Garonne. Originally from Cuzorn, the Bellecombe family arrived in Clairac through the marriage of Charles Frontin de Bellecombe to Marie Antoinette Suriray de La Rue in 1850, whom he had known after his appointment as director of the tobacco factory in Tonneins, after he had run the one in Le Havre. Charles and Antoinette had only two daughters, Cécile and Henriette, themselves childless. While the Suriray de La Rue family lived in their castle in Tonneins, Henriette's mother, née Léaumont, lived in the castle of Castille. Visibly passionate about the ancient history of her family and her village, Henriette de Bellecombe devoted herself to the study of several centuries of family archives gathered by her Delpech cousins. Bequeathed by the latter to the National Archives of France, this collection is essential for anyone working on Clairac and its history. This is an opportunity to thank Claire Delpech, great-niece of Miss de Bellecombe, for giving us access to many of these documents, and for having often identified the models as here her aunt, in the little cart that took her from Bireboy to Roche… The little girl in white that we see in front of the old woman is one of the daughters of Conrad Schlumberger and Louise Delpech.
