Vacquerie-and-Saint-Martin-of-Castries

Vacquerie-and-Saint-Martin-with-Castries is a common French, located in the department of the Herault and the area Languedoc-Roussillon. It comes from the unification of the two old communes of Vacquerie and Saint Martin's day de Castries in 1832.

Its inhabitants is called Vaccastriens.

Geography

Vacquerie-and-Saint-Martin-with-Castries is located on the calcareous plate of the Larzac, between the Cirque of Navacelles, Saint-Guilhem-the-Desert and Lodève.

History

Toponymy

The word Vacquerie comes from vaccaria : place where the cows feed, waste land delivered to the pasture. It derives from traditional Latin vacca to which the suffix - aria was combined.

Prehistory and Antiquity

Many dolmens, tumulus, menhirs and sepulchral cavities testify to a demography particularly developed with the final Neolithic era. The swallow-hole of Saint Martin's day d' Azirou presents remainders of construction, typical material lithic of Rodézien as well as ceramics. In the sepulchral cave of Maurous, explored by the canon Joseph Giry, were new overdrafts large funerary vases dating from the Bronze Age, today exposed with the museum of Lodève. The large dolmen of Ferrussac was also used as collective burial.

“Cave-cisterns” were used to recover water with chalcolithic and the Bronze Age. One finds traces of habitat and enclosures going back from Old from Copper on the sites to Saint Martin's day d' Azirou, Montsaloux, Trivalle, Sablières and Vernède and of the vestiges of Roman villas and three ancient ways in Trivalle.

Historical period

In 807, king Louis the Piles yields the place named Castries with his church Saint Martin (ruined today) to the abbey of Saint-Guilhem-the-Desert, founded by William of Orange, count de Toulouse.

From the treaty of Meaux in 1229, the bishops of Lodève become the lords of their diocese. Certain territories continue not to depend on their jurisdiction but come out directly from Saint-Guilhem (part of the village of Vacquerie, the North-eastern part of the commune, Azirou and Saint Martin's day de Castries). In 1488, the chamberlain of l´abbaye of Saint-Guilhem yields to the family of Vissec de Latude the field of Saint Martin's day de Castries. The family of Vissec de Latude de Fontès will have the seigniory of Saint Martin-of-Castries until the XVIIIe century.

During the wars of religion, the village was taken by the catholics in 1580.

At the XIXe century, Vacquerie was ideally located on the old way going of Montpellier at Millau. In 1861, the boring of the road of the Not of Escalette, hitherto only one mule track, signed the decline of its population.

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

The commune of Vacquerie-and-Saint-Martin-of-Castries account several monuments megalithic like the dolmen of Costa Caouda, the two dolmens of Ferrussac and one of the four menhirs of Coulet.

In speleology, several swallow-holes located on the commune are among most remarkable of the department of Herault: the Barnabé swallow-hole has a 312 meters depth and a development higher than 2 kilometers.

In the village, the house known as “of Bailly” shows a carved door and a gallery of the XVIIe century.

Founded in 1989, the experimental site of architecture of Cantercel integrates its contemporary buildings into a landscape site. It has the role to be a place of research, formation and sensitizing to environmental architecture.

Personalities related to the commune

The sculptor Paul Dardé (1888-1963) cut in an always visible block close to the dolmen of Costa Caouda the coarse outline of his work the primitive Man (1931), intended for the National museum of the Prehistory of the Eyzies-with-Tayac.

The archeologist, man of the church and speleologist Joseph Giry (1905-2002), which discovered the Etruscan necropolis of Saint-Julien de Pézenas and excavated the oppidum Ensérune, was cleaned of Vacquerie in 1934.

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