Bellegarde-en-Forez

With its 2040 inhabitants, Bellegarde-en-Forez covers an area of 18.91 km². Located in the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region, this town is part of the Loire department (42) as well as the district of Montbrison. Bellegarde-en-Forez has been part of the Community of Communes of Forez Est (CCFE) since January 1, 2017.

Les Bellegardoises and les Bellegardois have a very interesting geographical location. Indeed, located in the plain of Forez, this municipality is between the Monts du Lyonnais and the Monts du Forez. We can therefore come and admire these mountains from the top of Bellegarde en Forez. Pleasure guaranteed for nature lovers!

Bellegarde-en-Forez is fortunate to be close to several major cities. Indeed, Saint-Étienne is about 30 km away, Lyon 60 km away, Roanne 60 km also and Montbrison 20 km away. In addition to the many jobs in the town, it is very easy to go to work in one of these big cities.

In short, this village combines the pleasure of living in the peace of the countryside and the proximity of important towns.

Municipality	Bellegarde-en-Forez
Postcode	42210
Latitude	45.6497440 (N 45° 38’ 59”)
Longitude	4.2995240 (E 4° 17’ 58”)
Altitude	From 361m to 606m
Surface area	18.91 km²
Population	2040 inhabitants
Density	108 inhabitants/km²
Prefecture	Saint-Etienne (39 km, 35 min)
Insee code	42013
Intercommunality	CC de Forez-Est
Department	Loire
Territories	Lyonnais, Massif Central
Region	Auvergne-Rhône-Alps

Saint-André-le-Puy	4.2 km (8 min)
Saint-Cyr-les-Vignes	4.5 km (9 min)
Montrond-les-Bains	5.6 km (8 min)
Cuzieu	6.6 km (12 min)
Saint-Galmier	7.3 km (10 min)
Valeille	7.8 km (11 min)
Viricelles	8.2 km (11 min)
Rivas	8.4 km (14 min)
Maringes	8.4 km (10 min)
Marclopt	8.7 km (13 min)
Chazelles-sur-Lyon	8.8 km (10 min)
Boisset-lès-Montrond	9.8 km (14 min)
Chamboeuf	9.8 km (14 min)
Craintilleux	10.2 km (16 min)

The heritage trail:

Take advantage of the educational panels along this path to discover the local heritage of Bellegarde-en-Forez.
A breathtaking reward...

The Saint-Pierre chapel:

It offers a breathtaking view of the Forez plain...
According to the land register, the parcel of the chapel has the shape of a semicircle on the south side. This is the site of an ancient stone circle, called "Korn" as in Neolithic places of worship. It is said that the Saint-Pierre de Montmeyn chapel was built by Renaud de Montrond on his return from the Crusades in 1324. The cult of Montmeyn, from the Latin medianus which means environment (mystical), is very old, pagan then Christian. He keeps the memory of the cult of the rising sun passing, during Christianization, from the rising sun to the rooster then to St Peter. The rural pilgrimage was very popular, for the cattle and the fruits of the land, a sign of a very ancient cult of fertility. The Saint-Pierre chapel is close to a hiking trail and a botanical path.

Le battou:

Associated with the mill, there was, about 150 m downstream on the immediate border of the Anzieux, a second mill called "the battou"... to beat the clover. This battou worked with the same water, coming from the same reach and the same lock used by the first mill. This second mill ceased to function between the wars. There was also a whole network of ditches to irrigate the meadows (more rarely some land) located downstream, up to the road from Bellegarde to Saint-Galmier. A ditch even went as far as the Pioteyry farm on the road from Bellegarde to Cuzieu.
From the hemp beater to the clover beater: In the rescue and enhancement of small assets, the clover beater is featured, called in patois, the "battou". This rudimentary mechanism has a long history which deserves our attention: From the Middle Ages on, men used, for the making of their clothes, fabrics made from plant fibers such as hemp. You should know that this textile plant has played for several centuries, an important role in the domestic economy of the peasants. Hempseed was sown in April or May, in loose, well-smoked soil. In the mountains, the alluvial lands of the valley bottoms were reserved for it. The female plants which bear the seeds in spikes in the leaf axils were cut at the end of August. The next operation was to crush the hemp stalks to facilitate the separation of the fibers from the hemp. For this, the peasants came to the beater consisting of a cylindrical millstone rotating on a stone basin or recumbent millstone. All that remained was to separate, by hand, the fibers of the hemp seed, the woody part of the stem. The fibers united, twisted into dolls, formed the tow, like a long ponytail. This tow had to be combed on a rudimentary loom made up of a board fitted with large nails. It was the work of specialized workers from Auvergne: the piquaires. In winter, they boarded in an inn and offered their services from farm to farm. Hemp could also be sold raw. The stems grouped in bundles easily found buyers at the fairs and markets of the region, particularly in Montbrison. For many peasants who lived in self-sufficiency, the sale of the skeins of hemp constituted then the only inflow of fresh money, allowing them the purchase of fabrics, shoes, sugar, salt and other food. After 1830, when hemp cultivation covered 170,000 hectares, the decline would begin. Around 1900, the area of hemp, land sown with hemp seed, only reached 20,000 hectares in France. However, this was not the end of the hemp beaters.
The clover beater: Until then, very little developed breeding was conceived not as an end in itself, but as a means of obtaining a few liters of milk, a little manure and above all of having a tractive force. The milk production of the Forézienne cow, generally harnessed, barely reached an average of 5 liters per day, a quantity barely sufficient for the consumption of a family with often very large offspring. Towards the end of July, the peasant, equipped with a large wooden comb that resembled the one used to pick blueberries, cut the brown pompoms from the ripe clover. Brought home, the flowers were finishing drying in the sun, in a corner of the yard. Stacked in a bag, they were transported to the beater of the mill to be seeded. The old grindstones, which had no rim, had been surrounded by a wooden chest about fifty cm high. To beat clover, the rotating wheel used for hemp was replaced by a lighter wheel. After the First World War, the arrival in the villages of the clover threshing machine, commonly called the clover kneading machine, marked the end of the activity of the ancient beaters.
Operation of the beater: The small rotating grinding wheel, in granite, is in the shape of a truncated cone. It was driven, in direct drive by a transmission shaft operated by a spinning wheel. This spinning wheel, in the shape of a small wheel, hence its name, consisted of a hub equipped with blades, concave in shape, resembling large "spoons", it is by this name that they were designated. It is the living force of the current which made the spinning wheel turn horizontally. From the retention basin located above, the water escaping from the valve entered a narrow pipe made of planks or dug in a trunk, to strike the spoons, below, under the vault. Being in direct drive, the spinning wheel drove the small grinding wheel, its power did not exceed half a horse. In the past, most millers had a hemp beater next to their main installation. There are still remains near old flour mills. Here a large recumbent sandstone millstone, there a small truncated cone millstone, elsewhere a small construction, straddling the reach or the diversion channel. It is for reasons of safety with respect to the flour that these beaters were located away from the mill, downstream of the latter, requiring less hydraulic power.

The castle:

The creation of the castle of Bellegarde and the castle village associated with it is probably linked to the passage very near the castrum of the main road from Lyon to Montbrison, "the via Lyoneisa "... appearing on numerous occasions in a burrow of the seigneury of Bellegarde for Renaud de Forez, in the years 1355-1357; the site is located on a rocky outcrop, fingerprint of the Lyon mountains which dominate the Forez plain. The altitude is not important, around 500 m at the highest point of the site.
It was not until the 1260s that Jean de Marcilly paid homage to the Count of Forez for his possessions in the "chatel de Bellagarda". At the end of the 14th century, the Bellegarde castrum became part of the heritage of the Dukes of Bourbon. The castle of Bellegarde does not seem to have been subservient to anyone, and at most we know that in 1317, Girin de Pinet received from the count de Forez a part of the revenues of the chatellenie of Bellegarde. Despite the clearly limited importance of this stronghold, the Count of Forez, then the Duke of Bourbon, maintained a lord of the castle and a provost in Bellegarde: André Valencon, clerk of a notary, was appointed provost of Bellegarde by Jeanne de Bourbon, countess of Forez, in 1377; on the same date, Jean de mars was captain and lord of Bellegarde.
The castle is located on the hillside, dominating the castle village which develops upstairs on the slopes. The castle occupies the highest point of the castrum. It consists of a keep and a square tower, both integrated into an enclosure enclosing several buildings. The enclosure of the castle is itself included by that of the castral village. The keep, which seems to be in one of the angles of the enclosure of the castle, is a high quadrangular building crowned with hoists and topped with a four-sided roof pierced by a small watchtower in its center. We see two small quadrangular openings located immediately under the slab, and a mullion window halfway up. Connected to the keep by a high crenellated curtain, rises at some distance from it, a quadrangular crenellated tower covered with a four-sided roof. Two single-cross windows illuminate the building. The portion of wall connecting the two towers is pierced with two mullioned windows, thus showing the presence of buildings resting against this curtain. Beyond the tower stands a second curtain, lower than the previous one, also equipped with a mullion window. The castle walls are making a comeback at this level. The castle dominates a crenellated wall roughly ovoid.
Nowadays: Most of the buildings of the present castle of Bellegarde are made up of buildings from the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries. These led to the construction of important terraces and cellars in order to reduce the slope and create a vast horizontal level to establish the new buildings. The castle has therefore changed location, while it still occupied the dominant point of the site in the 15th century. The choice of a less steep topographic position is undoubtedly justified by the search for space and less difficult living conditions. This change of location suggests a gradual decommissioning of the medieval castle in the course of the 16th century, then its abandonment for a new construction corresponding better to the taste of the day. The redevelopments of the modern era have greatly modified the plot of the medieval village, the current castle occupying nearly a third of the total area of the former castle town.

The viaduct:

The route includes several viaducts and tunnels between Sain-Bel and Sainte-Foy-L'Argentière and formerly served mines, quarries and tile factories. Today there is only one quarry connected to the line. It crossed the departmental limit between the Rhône and the Loire shortly after Meys under the Viricelles tunnel (625 m) before entering Viricelles-Chazelles / Lyon station, a connection point with the old Saint-Symphorien-sur tramway -Coise. The line then descended the Anzieux valley towards the west to reach the plain of Forez where it crossed the Roanne - Saint-Etienne axis at the Montrond-les-Bains station. It then crossed the Loire by a viaduct of 420 m, then, by an almost rectilinear route, reached the station of Montbrison, point of junction with the artery Clermont-Ferrand - Saint-Etienne via Thiers. The route went down the valley of the Anzieux in cut or in embankment. The platform is still clearly visible in this valley where it has been transformed into a path in places. Near the quarries of the Loire, we find the brand new way to transport the ballast extracted from the mountain. The Montbrison line passed to the right of the road in a trench, before crossing it by a bridge which has now disappeared. A little further on, still in the same sector, the mountain was cut to make way for the track, destroying the short tunnel which is still visible. The track now follows the line platform to the surroundings of Montrond-les-Bains, before leaving it to connect to the main line.
During 2002, a service road was built between Montrond-les-Bains and the Carrières de la Loire located at the start of the Anzieux valley in the town of Bellegarde en Forez. The platform of the line was reused, finding the trains thirty years after seeing them disappear!

The mill:

It is probable that this mill dates back a century or two (or even more) to 1302 because the old castle, with the village surrounded by its walls, dates from the 11th or 12th century while in the current town a priory was installed since the 11th, even the 10th century (depending on the abbey of Saint-Martin d'Ainay in Lyon). This mill produced white flour for customers until the 1930s. Then, with the flour and bran separation system damaged and not being repaired, the mill limited its commercial activity to milling. for cattle. It worked for centuries thanks to the water of the Anzieux which was diverted from its bed by a reach leading to a lock located just upstream. It operated this way until 1940 and the last miller to do so was Jean Serre. During the war it did not work, the paddle wheel deteriorated and the lock became silted up. In 1948, the mill returned to service thanks to an electric motor that the next miller, Pierre Vercherand (Jean Serre's son-in-law), had bought. Its activity remained limited to the production of "crude" for feeding cattle. In 1958, the mill ceased its now unprofitable commercial activity. More modern mills - crushers - had been installed or were in the process of being installed, by the Dubois brothers (Benoit and Henri) and by the agricultural union of Bellegarde in a building built on the Chemin du Ruisseau. After 1958, however, the mill continued to operate, but only for the specific needs of the farm associated with the mill. In 1966, the mill ceased to function definitively after eight centuries (or more) of "good and loyal service". The farmer - Pierre Vercherand - then left the mill and at the same time sold the electric motor that was used to drive it.
The history of this mill bears witness to the relative permanence of technical practices for centuries and then to their sudden change in the 20th century, especially in the second half.

The church: The Saint-Ennemond church, in neo Gothic style, was built from 1860 to 1892, on the site of the old Romanesque church (consecrated to the Ainay abbey in the Rhône, in 1153); Having become dangerous, the bell tower was secured in 1892 with keys.
The Javogues door: The birthplace of Claude Javogues, born in 1759 in this family home. Lawyer, deputy for Rhône et Loire, revolutionary, he made "the Terror in Forez" reign from 1793 to February 1794. Under the Directory, he was arrested in Paris, tried and shot on October 10, 1796. The door is listed as a Historic Monument since 1947.
The Baudin gate: In the Middle Ages, the Baudin gate was the gateway to the village of Belle-Garde where travelers paid the grant.

Last name	Activity type	Rate	City
Museum of Weaving and Silk-making	Culture and education	4 € to 6 €	Bussières (21 km)
Cross-country electric scooter ride in West Lyonnais	Sports sensations	30 € to 40 €	Bessenay (25 km)
Horse ride in Green Beaujolais	Nature and the great outdoors	50 € to 220 €	Chamelet (39 km)
Fast-track admission to the Musée des Confluences	Culture and education	9 €	Lyon (41 km)
Brunch cruise on the Saône in Lyon	Entertainment	36 €	Lyon (41 km)

Last name	Outing type	Difficulty	Duration	Departure municipality
Circuit Le Vieil Ecotay - ATV	Mountain bike itinerary	Athletic	1:25	Montbrison (18.8 km)
Circuit of the Cross of the Fol - Observatory of the landscapes of Montrottier	Hike	Easy	1:40	Montrottier (20 km)
From the Puy to the Pond	Hike	Intermediate	3:05	Lézigneux (21 km)
Walk near Saint-Bonnet	Village visit	Intermediate	1:00	Saint-Bonnet-le-Courreau (28 km)
The High Chaumes	Hike	Intermediate	3:25	Saint-Anthème (34 km)

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Bellegarde-en-Forez

Bellegarde-en-Forez

Tourism, holidays & weekends guide in the Loire

Geographical information

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Things to see and do

Photos

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Visits, leisure and activities nearby

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Related articlesBellegarde-en-Forez

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