His wife Henriette had sold the castle in 1924 after the death of her father, Baron Oberkampf de Dabrun, but she wanted to keep the fountain that adorned the courtyard and relocate it to Roche. On 15 November 1926, while it was still in Sauvebœuf, the fountain was included in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments.
In the park surrounding Roche, Édouard Delpech installs the fountain at mid-height, with the village and the Lot valley forming the backdrop for this production. Very quickly, it became one of the strong points of Clairacais tourism, the owners generously allowing access to tourists and children who came for summer camp; in Place Viçose, a road sign indicates the direction to take, and tourist leaflets promote it.
At the heart of a hexagonal basin, three superimposed basins, supported by columns, make up the fountain, more than eight metres high. Five columns surrounding a sixth one support the first basin decorated with a gadrooned decoration and adorned with four faun heads. On the perimeter of this first basin, six columns decorated with fish scales support the second, decorated like the first with beaded gadroons. The third and last basin, supported by a central column, is surrounded by four thinner columns, surmounted by fire pots, all five resting on the intermediate level. The coronation is a rock with four figures, two naked men and two winged mermaids. All four of them discharge water through their mouths, breasts and sex. At the top, a quadrangular dice rises, decorated with foliage and drapery, children's heads and garlands. On one of the faces, the date of the monument: 1610.
Studied by the Marquis de Fayolle (La Revue de l'Agenais, 1931), Suzanne Gendry (Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique du Périgord, 1969), then finally Jean-Emmanuel de Ferrières de Sauvebœuf (Art et histoire en Périgord Noir, 2012), the fountain is now attributed to Nicolas Rambourg, sculptor and architect of the Château de Hautefort ; it is likely that there were originally four of them, dedicated to the four elements, perhaps inspired by the Songe de Poliphile, by Francesco Colonna (published in 1499).
Born in Saint-Mihiel (Meuse) around 1559, the Lorraine architect Nicolas Rambourg died on 2 July 1649 at the Château d'Hautefort (Dordogne), his major work. He had settled in the Périgord, while his elder brother, Jean, had settled in Limousin. It was probably the Pérusse des Cars family who entrusted him with his first building sites.
When the Delpech family sold their Roche property in the early 1990s, the commune acquired the fountain with the intention of relocating it to a village square. It was at this time that the Ministry of Culture studied the dossier, approving the proposal of the new owner of Sauvebœuf, who wished to acquire it in order to reinstall it in its original setting. On 20 January 2012, the fountain is definitively classified as a historic monument. Today, the fountain is still in the Roche Park. So what will its future look like?
