Erve

See also: Erve (homonymy)

The Erve (gold. Gallic/Latin Arva = running water; ancient tribe of the Arviens ) is small a river department of the Mayenne (53). It has its source on the southern slope of the Chaine of Coëvrons, near the forest of Sillé-the-Guillaume, above Vimarcé. It sprinkles successively Vimarcé, Saint-Georges-on-Erve, Adze-the-Berenger, Holy-Suzanne (where it supplied 17 mills), Chammes, Saint-Jean-on-Erve, Saint-Pierre-on-Erve, Saulges, Ballée. It enters the department of the the Sarthe, where it receives, by left bank the Treulon, and by Right Bank the Vaige, then joined the the Sarthe with Sablé-sur-Sarthe.

Historical note

Erve takes its source in Vimarcé close to the grounds called Private the in a consent of Sillé of 1672. The lower course depended on the baronnie of Sablé since the mill of the Breakdown , and city close to its mouth carries it named Porte of Erve .

16th century at the 19th century, and for some of them, 20th century, 43 mills with water drew their mechanical energy from the river: mills with grains (barley, corn…), with tan, paper, fuller artisanal (cloth), sawmills and other workshops (manufactures charts to be played Holy-Suzanne, pilery of Trèfle, bruising mill)…

In addition to the mills with corn, the mills with paper of Holy-Suzanne and the Forges of Moncor were principal the factories established on the course of Erve. In the Year VI, the millers whose mills were in lower part of Moncor felt sorry for of what the farmer of the forging mills, by the establishment of two bocambres for the washing of the ore, had encumbered the bed of the river and deprived them of water. On their side, the ironmasters and the paper makers obtained in the An XI an order of the prefect prescribing with the residents, but with the expenses of the owners of factory, the clearing out and biennage of the river, of Vimarcé in Moncor.

See also: Mill of Thévalles, Paper mills of Holy-Suzanne (Mayenne), Forging mills of Moncor

Toponymy

Several localities located on the course of the river bear its name:

  • Erves is a hamlet with two kilometers in the north of Holy-Suzanne which included/understood a mill, a farm, lime kilns, and a group of monuments megalithic which gave place to important archaeological excavations at the 19th century and the 20th century. The dolmen which remains today is the oldest monument of the Mayenne.

See also: Dolmen of Erves

The classified site of the valley of Erve

  • By decree of July 15th 2003, published in the Official journal of July 22nd 2003, the ministry for ecology, the development and installation durable classified the unit, of a surface of 436 ha., formed by the valley of Erve on the territory of the communes of Saint-Pierre-on-Erve, Saulges and Thorigné-in-Charnie (Criteria of classification: picturesque, scientific and artistic ).

  • Between Saint-Pierre-on-Erve and Saulges, the valley of Erve presents all the demonstrations of an erosion Karstique to the favor of a calcareous outcrop dating from the primary era. The site comprises on both sides canyon, length of approximately three kilometers for a hundred meters broad and dominated by imposing precipice of about thirty meters height, plates or causses dug of small dry small valleys, strewn with broken stones, roughcast rock and punctuated chicots of small depressions closed on the ground generally more fertile, and in basement a network of pits, corridors and rooms. It is about a true landscape event, without equivalent in the solid mass Hercynien of the west of France, which contrasts with the countryside of the woodlands of the neighborhoods to the flexible lines and the soft inclined slopes.

  • the site of the valley of Erve is also one of the highest places of the prehistory of the North-West of France. Like Mr Allard in a bulletin of the French prehistoric company of 1976 notes it: “Its importance seems to hold initially with the calcareous nature of the basement which determined a karstic relief with shelters - under - rock and of the caves favourable with the installation of the paleolithic populations troglodytes, but perhaps also to a geographical position which in fact an interesting halt on one of the natural ways allowing to connect the Low Loire to Normandy” . The revelation of the true prehistoric importance of the valley of Erve dates from the discovered in June 1967 of parietal paintings of paleolitic the superior in the cave of Dérouine which for summer has classified under the historic buildings. This discovery came to consolidate the value of the site which had already delivered tools important. New objects and bones, of an main interest, were found again in 2006 and 2007.

Fish

Of its source with Saint-Jean-on-Erve, Erve is classified in first category. Upstream, steeply sloping and of a width of 5 meters on average, it presents a fast flow punctuated by foundation rafts or blocks. The Fishing with the fake, with the minnow are some of the techniques used for the catch of trouts fario. The morphology of the river changes with Saint-Jean-on-Erve: downstream, it changes piscicultural category (second category). Broader (10 m) and rythmée by many stoppings, Erve becomes calmer, favourable with the Cyprinidé S and carnivorous fish.

See too

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