La Courtille wash house
⑫ La Courtille wash house
This washhouse, donated to the cantonal hospice of La Courtille, was in a poor condition so that the wooden shelter had to be pulled down in 2018.
One of the washing stones of the washerwomen are still visible. The shelter is to be rebuilt.
| « | To go to stage ⑬ → Then retrace your steps, rue de Culoison. You are again in front of the Fief Gentil water mill, rue de Culoison. 50 m further on, towards the town center, take the street on your left, rue de la Verronerie, then, further on again, on your right, avenue de l’Auverdière; continue on rue du Réflessoir, as far as rue de Loches, where you’ll find the Moulin des Aigremonts. Be careful, it’s about 1.2 km between Le Fief Gentil and the Aigremonts windmill. |
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This wash house is located on land formerly belonging to la Vasseliere on the Vaugerin stream. It was built on the initiative of Louise Paillard (nee Cochart), a wealthy widow. On 5 July 1898 she gave the council hospice, which had opened the year before, a plot of land of 108 centiares in order to create a wash house for the hospice residents and employees. She paid for the building of ‘an enclosed and covered wooden shelter with basins for six washer women’. To get to the wash house they brought their
wheelbarrow loaded with laundry along a three metre wide passageway which began directly from the front of the hospice.
This is now avenue Carnot. The land was sold in 1982 to a private individual but in 2018 the local authority purchased the small 28 m² plot where the wash house stood in order to rebuild it and create a gully along the stream down to the mill at Culoison.
© Photo : Patrick Goetgheluck