Mesnière
Mesnière is a common French, located in the department of the Orne and the area Basse-Normandie.
Geography
Area of Basse-NormandieDepartment of the Flowering ash
District of Mortagne-with-Pole
Canton of Bazoches on Hoëne
The Community of communes of the basin of Mortagne-with-Pole
History
It holds its name of a Gallo-Roman field " mesnil " resulting from popular Latin mansionem (house, remains)
The country was évangélisé with the IV° century following the arrival of holy Céronne. However the parish church took for holy owners Gervais and Protais like the cathedral of Sées.
In X° century, at the time of the invasions Normans, Mesnière was placed at the borders of the duchy of Normandy, the seigniory of Bellême and the field of Rotrou, counts de Mortagne, who strengthened by a powerful mound, the passage of the Sarthe with Longpont. The family of Rotrou also built other mounds entrusted to knights of their entourage: mound of Gatine with Gérusse, mound of the borough, known as of the Mound-Boulay:
The knights of Mesnière contributed, by donations, with the religious foundations of the Pole: abbeys of Thiron and the Trap door, leper-house of Chartrage and collegial of All Saints' day to Mortagne to which the presentation of the cure of Mesnière was given.
At that time, the first lords of the family of Puisaye appeared who will preserve the seigniory of Mesnière until the Revolution.
As of the XII° century, the church had been rebuilt in the Romance style such as it is currently presented with its beautiful gate.
The castle of Longpont was the residence of two countesses of the Pole, Mathilde of Saxony called also Mahaut of Bavaria and Héllissendre de Rothel. Saint Louis made a stay in 1257 there when it took possession of the county of the Pole; it delivered there charters in favor of the abbey of the Trap door. Louis XI rested there in 1472 with the return of a voyage to the Mount-Saint-Michel. There remain nothing of this castle.
After the war of Hundred-Years, several manors were built: Coudrelle, Villependu, Puisaye. Under Louis XV, the principal grounds of Mesnière, Longpont, Coudrelle, Puisaye, Joncherets, Ormois and other places were joined together to form the marquisat of Puisaye whose household head was large baillif of sword of the province of the Pole.
The day before the Revolution, Antoine de Puisaye made build the elegant castle of Joncherets, in the pure neo-classic style Louis XVI. His/her brother, Joseph-Genevieve was elected appointed of the nobility to the General states de1789. Thereafter it took the command as a chief of the catholic and royal army, destroyed at the time of the disaster of Quiberon en1795.
In 1791, the commune of Longpont was joined together with Mesnière which counted then more than 800 inhabitants and disputed the title of chief town of canton to its Bazoches neighbor on Hoëne, equipped with a smaller church.
With the XIX° century, Mesnière knew a relative prosperity and lived of its agriculture and its trade. The construction of the railway Alençon-Cop and the presence of a station supported a certain economic development. Some laic and religious quarrels appeared at the time of the construction of the school complex in 1895. The partisans of the private school went even until building another school but which was never brought into service.
The borough of Mesnière at the beginning of the XX° century
Mesnière paid heavy a tribe with the war 1914-18: 31 men left their lives there. The women then played a crucial role with the maintenance of the agricultural activity and artisanal just like at the time of the second world war.
With the XX° century, the village undergoes an important economic and demographic, consecutive regression with the final migration of rural towards the cities. The stop of the service of the trains of the railway line Alençon-Mortagne-Cop (in 1953 for the passenger traffic, in 1989 for that of the goods), the disappearance of the trade and the workshops of craftsmen, the closing of the school in June 1998 in spite of the installation of a teaching regrouping with 4 common neighbors during 15 years, mark stages of this slow decline
However Mesnière of the XXI° century makes a point of taking up the challenge of the future. A demographic fall stopped since the years 1970, a dynamic and powerful agriculture with 13 exploitations, a territory irrigated by the passage of the new trunk road 12 with 2x2 ways and the half-diffuser of Mesnière-Boêcé, the proximity of Mortagne, Mesle, Alençon which encourages credits to settle and with living in the countryside, the big number of secondary residents coming from Paris, intense community life, the charm of a center-borough in the course of rehabilitation,… as many elements which make it possible to keep confidence and optimism in a small city which decided, 10 years ago, to bind its destiny to its neighbors within the framework of the Community communes of the Basin of Mortagne-with-Pole.
Administration
Demography
Places and monuments
the CHURCH Of the MESNIERE
patrimoine/100 0051.jpg
The church initially was vault seigneuriale, placed under the protection of the first lords of Mesnière. It was built then probably increased at XIe and 12th centuries.
Indeed, on the one hand, in 1230, Gervais, lord of Al Mesnière (or Mesnneria) gave the presentation of the cure to the chapter of All Saints' day de Mortagne.Et on the other hand, Guillaume II, lord of Puisaye and of Mesnière, in the church a vault in 1300 founded.
The decorative reasons for the gate and these two dates make it possible to locate the construction of this Romance church during XIe - 12th centuries. It develops then in the simplest way: only one vessel lengthened, without sides, ending in a circular apse and punctuated by small windows.
Outside, this long massive building had of projecting only of simple flat buttresses between each window. The wall-pinion formed the main entrance: two flat buttresses supported it and two concave niches, on both sides of the gate, decorated this frontage.
This beautiful Romance gate presents parts carved to the geometrical figures in curve and on the capitals of the posts forming splaying.
The interior of the nave was simply punctuated by the light coming from the largely splayed windows and by a succession of posts whose rate/rhythm is fixed by the passage of tie-beams crossing the nave. This system of post related to the frame was deposited during work whose date remains to be determined.
It is at the 17th century that the church was modified. It seems that at that time problems of structure in masonry generated disorders bus of the buttresses were implemented on the southern frontage to stop the wall inclination. Benefitting from this work of masonry all the barges of the windows were unfortunately lowered, losing their initial provision.
During the same period the turn-bell-tower was built, dissimulating the beautiful Romance gate, both counter strong and the niches of the old Western frontage but participant in their conservation by protecting them from the bad weather.
Description of the church:
The Romance church of Mesnière preserved its provisions of origin overall. Only the bell-tower-porch, counter them strong and the lowering of the barges of the whole of the building came to bring new elements of architectures with more or less of success.
If counter them strong solid masses or the turn-porch of the 17th century very appreciably modify the Romance character of this building by adding volume again. The lowering of the barges of all the windows is much more prejudicial because it already modifies the building by the transformation of a Romance element into place.
A cemetery surrounds the church which is placed on a hillock, in the middle of the village.
The four spans of the northern frontage are composed by flat buttresses. These buttresses date from the construction of the building. Each span is punctuated by the boring of a window in semicircular arch closed of three panels of stained glasses.
On the west coast at the top of the first buttress a sundial is placed. Its position in north gives him an original character because this dial cannot give the hour during all the day.
The Western frontage is marked by a bell-tower-porch of square plan. The entry is done by the southern part, on the northern side one guesses the trace of a stone framing in semicircular arch which can form a second door. A concave niche is with the top of these two framings. The square plan of the porch is overcome by a bell-tower of octagonal section. The roof is formed by a slate dome crowned by a shelter taking again the octagonal section.
The bell-tower is characterized by the two meat offal sounds levels.
The old Western pinion is always read by the presence of crawling out of stone of size. Inside the bell-tower-porch one finds the traces of old buttresses, they is drowned in the masonry of the porch but allows to determine their site on the Romance pinion wall. On the angles of this wall were placed at the 17th century two buttresses of the same type as those of the southern frontage.
The southern frontage is made up of the same manner as the northern frontage. However, on the second span, is a Romance small door reaching the nave. The framing of this door is formed by a splaying with projection covered by a curve in semicircular arch. Unfortunately the two capitals of the posts lost their carved reasons because the tender stone was surbedded.
the CASTLE OF the JONCHERETS (private property)
The castle of Joncherets is an elegant traditional castle, one of the last raised before the Revolution, rare example of style Louis XVI in the old province of the Pole.
Construction has a stage, but the central part, in light projection, is raised of a crowned attic of a very broad stamped pediment of warlike attributes: deployed flags and balls of guns, with two simply engraved blazons of the letters P and C (Puisaye of Coudrelle). Above the three French windows of the ground floor, are carved, in low-reliefs, of large garlands typically Louis XVI. Two small round attic windows, the stocks of the high stone chimneys and a small pinnacle, complete to give all its pace to this beautiful construction which has, moreover, preserved common, stables and other dependences of a good seal.
Extracts from Manors and Châteaux from the canton of Bazoches over Hoëne, Philippe Siguret, Cahiers Percherons n°14, year 1960.
Personalities related to the commune
See too
- Common of the Flowering ash
External bonds
- Official site of Mesnière
- Mesnière on the site of the national geographical Institute
- Mesnière on the site of INSEE
- Mesnière on the site of Quid
- Localization of Mesnière on a chart of France and communes bordering
- Plane of Mesnière on Mapquest
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