Villedieu-les-Poêles and Hambye: The Copper Town, the Bell Foundry and the Ruined Abbey
Normandy, France
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225
XP
+100 France
= 325 total
1 day
Villedieu-les-Poêles and Hambye: The Copper Town, the Bell Foundry and the Ruined Abbey
225 + 100 XP
Villedieu-les-Poêles has beaten copper into pans for centuries, and the Cornille-Havard foundry, founded in 1865 and barely altered since, is one of the five bell foundries left in France — it cast the bells of Notre-Dame de Paris in 2013. In the countryside to the north, Hambye abbey, founded around 1145, stands roofless by the Sienne.
Required Activities
1
of 4
Take the guided tour of the Cornille-Havard foundry and find the two furnaces they still use: the wood-and-coal double-vaulted reverberatory furnace of 1865 for the big castings and the 1950s one for small bells, with the clay moulds and the casting pit between them. Ask which bell was last poured — this is the workshop that cast the 1.1-tonne peace bell for Bayeux and the bells of Notre-Dame
2
of 4
Take a workshop tour in the copper quarter and watch a pan being raised by hammer from a flat copper blank — the trade that gave the townspeople their nickname of Sourdins, said to come from going deaf at the beating — then find a piece with the maker's stamp still on it in one of the shops
3
of 4
Go into Hambye's parlour, a small square room whose four groin vaults all land on one central pillar, and which doubled as the room where the dead were watched overnight, then compare it with the 13th-century chapter house next door
4
of 4
Walk into the roofless abbey church from the east end, built between about 1180 and 1250, and go forward until the walls stop: an imperial decree of 1810 sold it as a stone quarry and the front and part of the nave were carted away. The outlines of the lost façade were dug out in 2011, 3 km down the Sienne from Hambye village
Take the guided tour of the Cornille-Havard foundry and find the two furnaces they still use: the wood-and-coal double-vaulted reverberatory furnace of 1865 for the big castings and the 1950s one for small bells, with the clay moulds and the casting pit between them. Ask which bell was last poured — this is the workshop that cast the 1.1-tonne peace bell for Bayeux and the bells of Notre-Dame
Take a workshop tour in the copper quarter and watch a pan being raised by hammer from a flat copper blank — the trade that gave the townspeople their nickname of Sourdins, said to come from going deaf at the beating — then find a piece with the maker's stamp still on it in one of the shops
Go into Hambye's parlour, a small square room whose four groin vaults all land on one central pillar, and which doubled as the room where the dead were watched overnight, then compare it with the 13th-century chapter house next door
Walk into the roofless abbey church from the east end, built between about 1180 and 1250, and go forward until the walls stop: an imperial decree of 1810 sold it as a stone quarry and the front and part of the nave were carted away. The outlines of the lost façade were dug out in 2011, 3 km down the Sienne from Hambye village
Before you go
Hambye abbey is a seasonal site: it opens from April to the start of November, shut on Tuesdays, and in October outside the school holidays only Wednesday to Friday afternoons with the weekend closed — there is no individual visit between early November and April, only group bookings of fifteen or more by appointment. Two of the four activities, the parlour and the roofless church, are inside it. The Cornille-Havard foundry runs Tuesday to Saturday from mid-February to early November with a last tour at 5.30pm and takes its annual closure from 18 December to 12 January, so it is shut on Sundays and Mondays in any season.
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
225 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
325 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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