A ramble through the Haute Marne and Arc-et-Senans
It is the time of year that we, as a family, migrate across France to Switzerland, with a car full of warm clothes, English things and a lively and inquisitive Jack Russell! Last year we stopped at Laon, to see the great cathedral there, and the massive Basilica of St Quentin. This time we were nearing Dijon and it was decided to explore an unknown area to us, the Haute Marne, where some of our family had lived at Droyes. It was here that my great great Grandmother, Camille Adelaide Lefebure (nee Bourdot), would have spent some of her childhood with her maternal grandparents, the Thomassins. Pierre Remy Thomassin had owned the Inn at Droyes-haute-Marne and his Thomassin kinsmen were Lords of the manor there and had owned the Chateau de Puellemontier and the land surrounding adjoining Droyes since the early Seventeenth Century. The family were also Comtes de Bienville.
Camille Adelaide Lefebure
The Haute-Marne is a secret area seldom visited and is, in some ways, an oddity. The architecture is eccentric and eclectic. On the way to Droyes we passed one church with the most extraordinarily ornate and fine Gothic/Renaissance carving and cathedral-scale portals.
A Gothic/Rensaissance portal in the Haute-Marne
Around another corner came the unforgettable sight of the little half timbered church of the Exaltation de la Ste Croix at Bailly-le-Franc. The church was built in 1510 and is somewhere between a house and a barn in its construction, apart from the spire, which surmounts its quirky west front.
The West Front
Inside there is little decoration save some ornate plasterwork and woodwork on the eighteenth-Century altarpiece and the beautiful Sixteenth Century stained glass windows, one of which shows a pieta.
This little church, one of a dozen in this strange style, has been beautifully restored although one does wonder how it stays up at all when the winds start to howl around the desolate hillocks of the Haute-Marne.
West 'Portico'
The East End
The parish church at Droyes is a different affair; large, cruciform and set grandly in its graveyard. We found the Thomassin family plot at the West end close to the half timbered inn owned by our ancestor and less than a mile away from the Thomassin family stronghold, the Chateau de Paulemontier. Bertie, our dog, also clearly felt some ancestral claim to the place as he tried to challenge a very large St Bernard dog to a ruck outside the old inn!
The West End of Droyes Church from the Thomassin plot
The Thomassin's Inn at Droyes-haute-Marne
Chateau de Puellemontier
Bertie and the St Bernard of Droyes
Our next stop was Arc-et-Senans. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is surely one of the most visionary European architects of the last five hundred years. Sadly much of his work has been lost or remained unbuilt, but his legacy, in his remaining buildings and extraordinary plans, lives on magnificently.
The entrance to the Saline Royale, Arc-et-Senans
Ledoux was a Neo-Classicist of the most inventive type. Despite being somewhat of a Utopian in his vision for the perfect city he remained, incongruously, under royal patronage for the majority of his career. The incomplete yet sublime Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans remains his most magnificent work.
Aerial view of the Royal Salt Works, or Saline Royale
Ledoux designed palaces, townhouses, bridges and more. Of his sixty marvellous tollgates around Paris a bare handful survive. Despite their beauty and unique architecture these gates became symbols for all that was wrong with French society and bureaucracy and were widely hated.
The brilliant museum at Arc-et-Senans
Ledoux was born in 1736 in Dormans-sur-Marne. In his youth he became extremely proficient at drawing, Classics and engraving. He commenced his studies in architecture with Jacques-Francois Blondel. His further studies with other architects brought him in to contact with the great classical buildings and the work of Palladio. Ledoux attracted a rich and aristocratic clientele. Between 1769-71 he visited England. and was a friend of the equally imaginative William Beckford.
One of Ledoux's Parisian palaces - a coach could drive under the building!
The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans bare testimony to the value that Eighteenth century Europe gave to salt. In France an unpopular salt tax kept the King happy and the people cross. Contrary to the wishes of the government Ledoux placed the saltworks close to the forests rather than the source of the salt water as, he surmised, it was easier to transport water than wood. The present structure was constructed between 1775-1778 and was intended as just a small part of a grand new city.
One enters the complex under a colossal portico inspired by the temples at Paestum and then a salt grotto of utterly theatrical nature. The gifts of Nature and the genius of man are contrasted in stone and cement in this man-made cavern.
The Director's House
The great semicircular courtyard is bordered by ten buildings containing forges, bothies and other offices. The centrepiece is the Director's House, which once also housed the chapel. The portico of this building is extraordinary; colossal, grotesque in the sculptural forms of the columns one part cylindrical the other a segmental square. The scale is enormous and this great and beautiful albatross is lost amidst the countryside which was to be the site of Ledoux's Utopian city.
The Saltworks declined and, like much of Ledoux's architecture, was a symbol for all that was wrong with monarchy in France. It is a wonder it has survived at all and, even more so, that is is in such splendid shape. The museum is exquisite and the endlessly varied models of Ledoux's works, built and unbuilt, are like faberge boxes in their elegance and imagination.
Ledoux was an innovator through and through. In his theatres , including his lost work at Besancon, he created a far more egalitarian plan for seating allowing the social classes, especially the lower echelons, better viewing and more comfort. He also invented the orchestra pit at the theatre in Besancon.
Cross-section of the theatre at Besancon
Model of the interior of the theatre at Besancon
Ledoux's celebrated image of the eye looking from the stage at Besancon
With the Revolution much of Ledoux's aristocratic clientele dispersed in one way or another and his glory days ended. History has been kinder to the great man and one need only visit Arc-et-Senans to be bowled over by his masterful design and a genius imagination that is hard to fathom.
Now, where will we get to next ski season?!
For more information on the Royal Saltworks visit:-
All images in this blog are the copyright of Oliver Gerrish. Please ask permission before using them
