Place:Pays de Caux, France

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The Pays de Caux (, literally Lands of Caux) is an area in Normandy occupying the greater part of the French département of Seine Maritime in Normandy. It is a chalk plateau to the north of the Seine Estuary and extending to the cliffs on the English Channel coast; its coastline is known as the Côte d'Albâtre. In the east, it borders on the Pays de Bray where the strata below the chalk show through.

Cauchois is a notable dialect of the Norman language. The Pays de Caux is one of the remaining strongholds of the Norman language outside the Cotentin (or Cherbourg) peninsula.

The principal communities are Le Havre, Dieppe, Fécamp, Yvetot, and Étretat.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Independent Gaul

Julius Caesar’s account of his military campaigns (Bellum Gallicum, The Gallic War) gives details of the Caletes, partly ancestors of the Cauchois (see Book II, 4, 9, ; Book VII, 75, 3–4, Book VIII, 7, 4)

Roman Gaul

Rescue archaeology undertaken on the line of the A29 autoroute revealed several Gallo-Roman villas. One of the most important is that of Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer, on the coast to the west of Dieppe. The archaeologists found a complex of several rooms, organised around a square court. Several of the rooms had been furnished with mosaics. To the north, the baths and other rooms were heated by hypocausts. The materials used were pisé (clay and grit well mixed and rammed down to form a wall), cob (a similar mixture of earth of a buttery consistency or marl, chopped straw and perhaps gravel) and timber framing, typical materials of Normandy’s later building tradition.

Lillebonne is on the site of the main town of the Caletes, the Gaulish tribe of the region. The Gallo-Roman town was established with the name , under Caesar Augustus and is famous for its Roman theatre. According to a common use in Roman Gaul, the bona (Gaulish word for “foundation, town”) was dedicated to the Roman emperor, like Augustodunum (Autun), Augustonemetum (Clermont-Ferrand) or Augustodurum (Bayeux), etc. The phonetic evolution from the element Julio- to Lille- can be explained by the analogy with the French word for island: île, with the article agglutination l = the, that makes sense with the word bona > bonne, which means "good" in French, so "l'île bonne" = the good island. Their original main oppidum could have been Caudebec-en-Caux or Fécamp, according to the archeological excavations and the numerous Gaulish artefacts, that were discovered in both towns.

Medieval

In the Merovingian period, the Pays de Caux became distinct from Talou: the ancient city of the Caletes separated into entities or ‘countries’ in the sense of the Latin pagus.

From the creation of the county of Rouen and of the Duchy of Normandy in 911, the Vikings settled a great number of people in the region and left an enduring legacy in the Cauchois dialect but also in the ethnic makeup of the Cauchois Normans.

Manoirs and châteaux of the 15th and 16th centuries

A manoir (manor house) is in principle, the residence of a seigniorial lord though, in practice, the term now includes country houses of the gentry. As a rule, they are not fortified. Since the Hundred Years' War, country houses have not had ramparts and towers. Artillery has rendered them obsolete. The peace and prosperity which were recovered following 1450, offered the option of reconstructing country houses and local materials such as flint and limestone were used. The owners could allow themselves to follow Renaissance style.

Most Norman manoirs have a dovecote in the courtyard. A study by historians revealed 635 dove cotes in the three arrondissements of Dieppe, Le Havre and Rouen. Most are round and are permanent structures. The rarities are polygonal and timber-framed. A few to be noted are:

• Château d'Etelan, Saint-Maurice-d'Etelan, 1494
• Manoir de la Bouteillerie, Rouelles, Le Havre, 1531, dovecote of 1631
• Manoir Dubocage de Bléville, Dollemard, Le Havre, 1516
• Manoir d'Harquebosc, Harfleur-Beaulieu
• Manoir de Reauté, between Octeville and Montivilliers, takes its name from a family of the 16th century. Contemporary with Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England.
• Château d'Epremesnil, Epremesnil, 1596, dovecote (note that the fief of Epremenil appears in the list of 1503 but the house, which was bombed in 1944 dates from the 19th century. (There must have been an earlier house and perhaps even a fief primitif (low Middle Ages) near the mill of Tauvais )
• Manoir du Grand Clos, 16th century.
• Manoir de Séntitot, Bévilliers, 1528: manoir in brick and stone, with Renaissance sculpture. The fief of Bevilliers was held by Louis de Richebourg and Jehanne Viennens. In 1624, a Protestant chapel (called in France a temple) was built behind the house.
• Manoir du Petit col Moulins, 16th century, dovecote.
• Manoir de Vitanval, Sainte-Addresse, early 15th century, with a 16th-century dovecote. It is a manoir of timber-frame construction with a staircase in an external turret. In 1563, the constable de Montmorency stayed there.
• Manoir d'Estouteville, with loggias, built in the 15th century by Guillaume d'Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen in 1453.

External links

• For more information, see the FR Wikipedia article Pays de Caux.

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