Sainte-Marie Abbey

English: , The Longues abbey, dedicated to the Holy Virgin, was created by Hugues Wac, wealthy lord of the Bessin. Henry II Plantagenet, King of England and Duke of Normandy confirmed the founding charter, dated 1168, a short time later. The estate of the first Benedictine monks, from Hambaye Abbey (Manche), was enriched with donations from local lords. When the Archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigault, visited in 1257, the community numbered twenty-two monks, possessed four priories and the patronage of some twenty parish churches across the Bessin. The 16th Century was even more of a disaster than the Hundred Years' War. Conferment of abbey revenues in 1526 deprived the monks of a regular abbot and the community became obsolete. Protestants ransacked the abbey in 1562, during the Wars of Religion. The decline continued and in 1760, the community counted only five members. After a lengthy procedure, the Bishop of Bayeux succeeded in having the abbey closed in 1782. The revenues (24,000 pounds) were then shared between the last abbot having benefited from conferment, who was also the Bishop of Lectoure (Gers), Louis Emmanuel de Cugnac, and the Bayeux seminary. Sold during the Revolution, the remaining buildings were saved from ruin by the American senator Charles Dewey who, in 1932, bought the whole complex and began work to safeguard the buildings. The abbey, fortunately spared by the destruction in 1944, is undergoing renovation and its owners have opened it and its recreated gardens to visitors., Captions , (Photo #1) GLAZED PAVING. The abbey in Longues is the Norman monument with the largest number of glazed paving tiles. Produced by the workshop in Molay, they were created in the last years of the 13th Century or during the 14th. They display geometric motifs, rosettes, hunting scenes or crests, generally in red-brown, green, yellow or blackish colours. The Norman workshops were specialised in the creation of "plates-tombes", level graves consisting of numerous assembled flagstones with inscriptions surrounding representations of the deceased. , (Photo #2) THE ABBEY CHURCH BUILDINGS. The only building of the cloisters that remains standing, formerly the servants' building, which became the priors' home, dates from the late 12th Century, and exhibits beautiful Romanesque vaulting standing on gadrooned capitals. To the south, the house built in the mid-14th Century was most probably the abbot's residence, in which visiting guests would lodge. It still has its original roofing timbers and magnificent mural paintings. Lithograph by Alexandre Maugendre, published in "Bayeux et ses environs", 1862-1865. Photography, Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine (photographic archives) distribution RMN , (Photo #3) THE ABBEY CHURCH. The abbey church, which had already been abandoned in the 17th Century, lost its nave, destroyed along with the tower above the intersection and part of the transept, at the end of the 18th Century. The choir with its level chevet, modest in its proportions but of remarkable architectural quality, bears the hallmark of the building work on the nave of the cathedral in Bayeux, and must date from the mid-13th Century. The unobstructed gallery, open by virtue of the separation into two parts of the wall in front of the windows, is characteristic of Norman gothic architecture. Lithograph , (Photo #4) PLAN OF THE ABBEY. The abbey was classical in design, built beside a stream and sheltered from sea winds, with convent buildings around the cloister, the church to the north, the abbot's and guests' houses to the south and a gateway to the west giving onto the poultry yard and the agricultural buildings. 1- Church, 2 - Dwelling house, 3 - Cloister and Chapter House, 4 - Abbot's "Palace", 5- Outhouses, 6 - Dovecote, 7- Medieval barn, 8 - Gateway, 9- Outbuilding with cart-house. Sketch: Com&Graph, based on an engraving by Arcisse de Caumont. (Photo #5) Church, nave, triforium gallery Photography, Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine (photographic archives) distribution RMN , (Photo #6) Abbey church. Lithograph from "Le Calvados pittoresque et monumental by Félix Thorigny, printed in Carn in 1847