Harbouring Pearls in 1943 - two years after...

The town's Mayors since the guillotine fell

La ville de Richelieu et ses Maires
The town of Richelieu and its Mayors

Marianne

• 1791 - PATTEAU François       10 years          The Revolution

• 1801 - De La MOTTE                11 years
• 1812 - JAHAN Armand               3 years
• 1815 - MARTIN Charles            11 years          Napoléon Bonaparte
• 1826 - TORTERUE Louis           4 years
• 1830 - FROGER René                 4 years
• 1834 - De La MOTTE                 1 year
• 1835 - RAGGONEAU               11 years
• 1846 - DELASSUS François      21 years!         Napoléon III
• 1867 - HULIN                              8 years           Franco-Prussian War
• 1875 - FROGER Léonide             7 years
• 1882 - LUNET Jules                     3 years    
• 1885 - JARRY Henry                   4 years           rue Jarry? and the railway station?
• 1889 - ORILLARD Paul              9 years
• 1898 - BRIDEL Eugène             21 years           WW1

• 1919 - PERROT Charles               6 years
• 1925 - PICHEREAU Oscar         12 years
• 1937 - MOULIN Fernand             9 years           WW2 & the Occupation
• 1946 - SELVESTRE Dr.Louis     12 years
• 1958 - FORTIER Dr.Marcel         31 years!
• 1989 - COQUERIE Gabriel           6 years
• 1995 - DEREUX Robert                6 years

• 2001 - GRAVEL Pierre                  7 years            La place du Marché
• 2008 - NOVELLI Hervé               5 years +....    La Halle de Richelieu

Maire Fortier, 1958 - 1989

Maire Coquerie, 1989-1995

Maire Dereux, 1995 - 2001

Maire Gravel, 2001 - 2008

Maire Novelli, 2008 - ...?

The re-opening of the Halle...

Restored for the first time since the 1640s, 371 years after the death of the original client, the 

cardinal duc Armand-Jean,

the town's market halle nears re-completion.

Modern regulations for food handling require a glass screen behind the restored railings,

but otherwise the structure is now historically impeccable - no expense has been spared.

A quality project - Bravo Hervé and his artisans!

Next restoration in 2384.

the official invitation to the opening

the gate to the place du Marché

the glass screens are added behind the restored railings

'new railings for old'; the old railings fully restored.

bronze glass clamps

copper guttering and rainwater downpipes...wow!

Franck Maubert and his 2013 novel 'Ville Close'

Franck Maubert (b.1955) a french novelist and essayist who has written a short novel concerning the strange qualities of the cité idéale of Richelieu.  His first visit and the impressions formed were in the 1990s and this 2013 book sketches his perception of a little town dominated by its insistent stoney design and fabric.  He was struck by recent bizarre real events; including a suicide - a 'defenestration' - of a young woman, and other rather odd aspects of the little population and their strange and surreal habits.

Some of the descriptions are only too recognisable from the reality!

No references to the Abbé Henri Proust, thank goodness!

• 1985 : La Peinture moderne, éd. Nathan. Essai.
• 1997 : Lexique Toxique, éd.
• 2002 : Est-ce bien la nuit ?, éd. Stock, 136 pages. Roman.
• 2003 : Près d'elles, éd. Flammarion, 211 pages. Roman.
• 2005 : Le Paris de Lautrec, éd. Assouline.
• 2005 : Et les arbres n'en seront pas moins verts, éd. Assouline.
• 2005 : Gainsbourg for ever, éd. Scali, 136 pages.
• 2006 : avec Isabelle Maeght et Yoyo Maeght, Maeght: L'Aventure de l'art vivant, éd. de La Martinière, 309 pages. L'étonnante histoire de la famille Maeght.
• 2005 : La Mélancolie de Nino, éd. Scali, 136 pages.
• 2008 : Le Père de mon père, éd. Philippe Rey, 141 pages. Roman.
• 2009 : L'odeur du sang humain ne me quitte pas des yeux : Conversations avec Francis Bacon, éd. Mille et une nuits, 108 pages.
• 2012 : Le Dernier modèle, éd. Fayard / Mille et une nuits, 128 pages. Dans le Montparnasse de l'après-guerre.- Prix Renaudot de l'essai 20122.
• 2013 : Ville Close

The T & B's 'vin d'honneur' at the townhall, and a film-set town - empty for once!

Mayor Novelli receives his gift from the T & B Master, David Cole-Adams

the Grande Rue cleared out for aerial drone film photography

Dalek trees cannot climb stairs
but they ARE a bit creeepy....

The Eminence Rouge would have been pleased by your company's visit and the excitement that you all brought to his cité idéale and even the young Abbé Henri Proust 'imself!

***

Bienvenue! les Tylers et Bricklayers

 STOP PRESS: 

 ABSOLUTELY PEACHY WEATHER 
 in 
 37120 RICHELIEU 

 TODAY SUNDAY 21 APRIL 2013

 STOP PRESS UPDATE: 
 METEO France OFFERS 
 - SUNNY DAYS WED/THURS/FRI - 

the company's web site introduces the visit

Next week, the little town of Richelieu will host the visit of a 30-strong party from the City of London's TYLERS and BRICKLAYERS company, one of the city's hundred or so livery companies - compagnonnages  in French.  They will stay at the hotel, the Puits Doré - located in the market square - and make expeditions to local destinations, some within the cité idéale itself.  They will sample the sumptious luxuries of the Touraine table.

They will bring the best wishes from the Lord Mayor of London

Alderman Roger Gifford

to
Mayor Hervé Novelli.

They are all welcome.

Below

 one or two buttons that take you to pages that might help orientate the curious visitor:

• A short history of the town
• A longer history of the town
• A map of the region
• A map of the town itself
• An aerial view of the town
• A video of the vanished château

a cottage restored intra!muros

the cottage façade

 The ideal town of Richelieu is packed with 17th century buildings large and small.  In the small square called place Nicholas Lemercier, one of the more modest houses has just been restored with its façade completely renovated.  It has a rather picturesque first floor gable window with an unusual semi-elliptical masonry cap.  Perhaps this stonework has given problems of damp infusion, so over the years the roofers have constructed a simple tiled pitch on a timber sub-structure on the top to protect it.

The result is happy!

the pretty window restored

***

Another 'pepperpot' gets a makeover

as it was...

Apparently a Swedish pair have bought the Northern pepperpot of the western-side old town gate that leads towards the town's now-redundant station.  We had assumed that this building was part of M. Deplaix's Renault garage - probably because of the huge Renault sign attached to its southern façade.  But who knows?  The residence that had been attached to the northern side of the pepperpot has been demolished leaving the old town wall more visible than before.  Has Bâtiments de France required the demolition of this non-descipt later extension in return for permission to carry out the restoration of the 17th century pepperpot itself?  

We'll all see as the project develops.

The newly exposed northern face

The pepperpot itself from the street

The junction of pepperpot and the newly exposed town wall

Laying the new floor for la Halle

As spring 2013 finally arrives and the temperatures rise sufficiently to allow concrete laying, the new floor of the Halle has now been laid.  Originally(1640) this floor would have been of simple beaten earth, and with all those animals must have been quite 'picturesque'.  The 2013 solution is a modern version of beaten earth that is a bit stronger and more hygienic. 

A big expansion joint bisects the plan at half-way - is this enough? There were insufficient expansion joints placed in the layout of the place du Marché paving and it is already showing cracks.

The level of the floor has been dropped to a lower and more 'authentic' level - rather as in Ur of the Caldees or Babylon, floor levels always rise so that heavy material does not have to be removed...

Alain Mannesson Malet

The famous books on geometry written by Alain (Allain?) Manesson Mallet (1630–1706), published in the 1680s, set out various methods of marking geometrical layouts, seemingly  in front of the famous new buildings of his day.

The château de Richelieu, the palace of Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal duc de Richelieu, is used several times as background to these illustrations.  Below we show some of these pages  culled from the web.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Manesson_Mallet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Manesson_Mallet

Alain Manesson Mallet

the chateau de Richelieu and the oval

the 'demi-lune' garden of the château

his book on geometry

in four volumes

the rear façade of the château

the main axis of the château

Palais Cardinal

The 'Palais Cardinal' in Paris in the life of the cardinal duc;
it was renamed the 'Palais Royal' once the Regente Queen Anne and the child-king Louis XIV lived there
after the cardinal's death in 1642

b'cos your worth it, darling...

was she short of a bob? - surely not!

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

We bring you Miss Elinor Wise of Baltimore USA, eighth and last duchesse de Richelieu, with her very understandable worries about her complexion, as the years, sadly, roll on...