Varennes-Vauzelles

Geography

Varennes-Vauzelles is today the third city of Nievre. The rural borough (Varennes-the-Nevers) owes its rise starting from 1920 at the repair shop of Vauzelles. The city of railwayman of Vauzelles thus came to enlarge the population, before the allotments as from the years 1950. The commune is at present very wide, including/understanding a part urbanized and agglomerated in Nevers (Vauzelles) and a rural part, Varennes. It is, by far, the first city of the suburbs of Nevers.

The city comprises most of the zones of activities and industrial of the agglomeration of Nevers (ZA Varennes-vauzelles/Garchizy, soon tertiary ZA of Bengy) from which it constitutes the Northern exit. The city is connected has an important highway network: the main road n°7, as well as a77 highway which puts Paris at only 2 hours of road.

With this locality located at the North of the agglomeration nerversoise, we are included in a new category which is that of the suburbs and more particularly of the working suburbs. It is advisable here to establish carefully the distinction insofar as the direction given at the end of suburbs varies according to the context and the place. Charles Sowerine indeed showed that the term according to whether one falls under the Anglo-Saxon or French culture does not have a priori the same content, including in terms of social hierarchy. Here it is indeed suburbs to which the “working” qualifier must be coupled, as well by the landscapes which characterize it as by the population which lived it or other elements still on which we will return then. This space is in particular identified by its identity and activities which point out an heavy tendency of the history of the suburbs and suburbs, “which accommodates part of the activities indeed that reject the communal authorities”. The author quoted previously referred in particular to the medieval period. In the case which interests us here it is not a question of that, but about a residential area organized around an activity employing a big part of the population, activity incarnated in a vast architectural unit, we want to speak about the repair shops railway. Game preserve-Vauzelle, coupled at the town of Nevers, had an evolution largely determined by the latter. This one played a part by its already old function of railway crossroads: dice the years a 1860 true station as well as a deposit and repair shops had been built. Thus “Nevers becomes the first large relay of traction for the trains in direction of Saint-Germain-of-Ditches, Clermont-Ferrand and Saint-Etienne. The railway vocation of Nievre is confirmed and the railwaymen become the greatest working reality of the department”. Until the shortly after the First World War, Varennes-the-Nevers, become Varennes-Vauzelles in 1969, hardly constituted but one hamlet with the doors of Nevers. A first phase of growth started in 1920 with the startup of the railway repair shops, decentralized of Nevers, whose construction could not have been completed before the First World War does not start. Once completed they seem to have constituted one of the greatest units of railway repair of material in France. The exploitation was then entrusted to a subsidiary company of railway company PLM, the General Company of Construction and Maintenance of the Material, the CGCEM, which was more particularly in charge of the repair of the engines. In parallel another company undertook the coaches. These two companies were integrated into the SNCF in 1945. The development was then fast: during the inter-war period manpower employed reached 1.200 people, the railway establishments being then the largest industrial plant of the agglomeration. A maximum of 1.500 employees was reached in the middle of the 20th century, manpower decreasing then. In fact this commune known a population growth where the setting in activity of the railway workshops is read easily and in two manners. It is read in the fact that the implementation of these workshops coincided with the resumption of the population growth: indeed between 1896 and 1921 the population had passed from 1633 inhabitants to 1440 in 1911, it took again then a rising curve starting from the census of 1921: the threshold of the 2.600 inhabitants was crosses in 1926, that of the 4700 in 1946 and in 1975 the commune exceeded the 8.000 inhabitants. In other words the population more than quadrupled since the opening of the workshops. It goes from either that the latter did not provide all employment but they contributed to it for a significant share. On this territory “a large working city developed logically became true suburbs”. This city once completed in 1931 counted approximately 600 residences what is nothing. The form selected points out that which we already noted for centers like Montceau-the-Mines or Creusot: they are “houses or twinned, equipped with gardens, also that social services and rarer commercial equipment”. One second phase of expansion occurred during the three decades which followed the Release, it resulted in a thickening of the frame around the two shapes of habitats, the suburban one and of the great units. Such a configuration could only lead to a form of life in isolation and with the birth of sociabilities and strong bonds the more so as the thickening of space was done in a way extremely framed between the way of railroad in direction of Fourchambault towards the North-West, and main road 7 according to an axis South-North, southern limit being definitely located in space by the physical mass of the workshops, which constitutes the element most easily locatable in the landscape for which crosses the agglomeration of Nevers and moves towards Paris by the main road.

History

Entitled Varennes-the-Nevers, until 1966, the common one was famous Varennes-Vauzelles and its chief town (town hall) moved rural borough of Varennes towards the city of Vauzelles to take into account demographic reality and to avoid its scission between rural and urbanized part.

Workshops the SNCF, today first repair shops of the district material of distributers, and the city of railwaymen of Vauzelles constitute the principal contemporary elements of the history of Varennes-Vauzelles.

Administration

In 1935, a socialist mayor (SFIO) was elected and it is the first resistant mayor of left of the commune large died in Germany the 19.05.1945. A communist mayor at summer named by the provisional government in 1945 C. Dagonneau and elected in 1946 and Communist since with the support of the Socialists. Mayors:

Camille Dagonneau (PCF). ? -- 1971
Marsaudon Henri (PCF) 1971--years 1990

Demography

Places and monuments

The City of railwayman built in 1920. Repair shops SNCF.La city is also bordered of a named forest " forest of Brosse" and of a water level, Niffond, which is located at the site of an old Nivernais mill, destroyed recently.

Personalities related to the commune

Cradle of the Drums of Bronx

See too

Common of Nievre

External bonds

Official site of the Town of Varennes-Vauzelles
Varennes-Vauzelles on the site of the national geographical Institute

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