In The Gazette of Cauchois heritage, edited every six by the CEPC (Cercle d’études du patrimoine cauchois), Jean-Louis Jumeau, specialist in the history of Valmont, a town where he worked as a doctor, is interested in the stronghold of Mont-Lévêque. The latter is located in the current commune of Hautot-le-Vatois, near Yvetot. More exactly in the hamlet of Véraval which is dear to the current president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. But that is not the point of the discovery of the heritage enthusiast, made at random during a day spent at the Departmental Archives.
A travel document from the Duchess of Estouteville
He then unearthed a travel document from Adrienne, Duchess of Estouteville, who went, with her daughter Jacqueline de Valmont, to Rouen. Their suite is two hundred strong, spending the night at Barentin and Pavilly. But the two “Ladies”, escorted by eight riders, go to Véraval. “The fief of Mont-Lévêque is dependent on the seigneury of Valmont. To whom and where do they go? Is it under the right of albergue?”, asks the author. He tries to answer these questions by looking at this property. “The mansion is designed with a first floor with five windows and a second under the roof with three skylights”, he describes.
This is only the beginning of the quest for Valmontais. The rest can be found in the Gazette dated the second half of 2020. An issue in which the president of the CEPC, Jean-Pierre Hébert, devotes an article to “Pains de Gênes by M. Forchy which have become a gastronomic specialty in the Cauchoise” and where Michel Decarpentry, former school director and secretary of town hall in Criquetot-sur-Ouville, looks back on the centenary celebration of 1789 in Yvetot and in several Cauchoise towns.
In the Pucheux, President Denis Ducastel, also responsible for the Rural University of Cauchois (URC) which feeds our section “Let’s talk cauchois”, looks at “the last sighs of the Norman chouannerie” a few years after the French Revolution. In the following pages, Lionel Gaudefroy demonstrates that Mont-Saint-Michel is indeed in Normandy. A number to put in the hands of your Breton friends …
La Gazette du patrimoine cauchois, n ° 56, 2nd half of 2020, 6 euros. Le Pucheux, n ° 116, Saint-Gorgon 2020, 5 euros.
Picture gallery
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