CONQUES : dwellings

Dwellings of Conques

Houses with two entrances...

No house remains from the Roman period and the most ancient in the village only date back to the end of the Middle Ages. But the adaptation to the sloping ground and the use of local material endow the dwellings of Conques with a great unity, whatever the building period is. In general, the houses placed in stages on the slope turn their main front towards the South and have two entrances. The first on the ground floor opens onto the inferior street whereas the second on the first floor opens onto the garden or the superior street. According to a local saying : «In Conques, we get in by the loft only to go out by the cellar». The latter, sometimes placed beside a workshop, is present everywhere in this old wine-growers country. Each location must have been dug in the rock and in order to avoid landslides a discharging arch often leans against the back wall.

Used materials

Schist reigns everywhere. Extracted on the spot and easy to cut up, it provided not only building stones but also roofs slates and streets cobblestones. High silvery roofs adorned with skylights or even pinnacles contribute to the village's charm. The schist lets its place to freestone, red or grey sandstone, more rarely granite, for doors and windows frames. Finally the beautiful yellow limestone of the church («Rousset» in French) is found here and there in the buildings, sometimes in columns form or even in sculpted pieces from roman monastic buildings. The material plundering by inhabitants reached its worst scale towards the middle of the last century after the cloister demolition. But it began earlier : sculpted stones can be found in dwelling places which date back to the XVIIth century such as the crow displaying Adam biting the forbidden apple which holds up a corbelled house at the beginning of the rue Charlemagne.

Half-timbered fronts

The originality of Conques also lies in its half-timbered fronts which are built according to the same technique : wooden sides laid obliquely or in an X, with a schist filling, at least since the XVth century up to 1900. The most beautiful fronts have two corbelled floors held by beams with ends carved into consoles. For he who contemplates them from the Bancarel site for example, the old houses of Conques make up with the Saint Foy abbey-church, which seems to crush them with its hugeness, an exceptionally picturesque indissoluble unity.

The city walls

Almost from its birth, Conques was a closed town, probably one of the first in Rouergue. Indeed, the city walls were built in the Roman era as shown by the architecture of the three surrounding gates still existing. The Iron Gate, a simple postern, comprises a saddlebacked lintel which has the same shape than the one of the southern portal of the abbey-church whereas the other two, Barry Gate and Vinzelle Gate, vaulted in barrel, open on the outside by a semi-circular arch lined with a discharging arch. The Barry Gate even shows all the characteristics of an XIth century edifice such as its bulky fanlight holding the springs of the red sandstone arches.
Afterwards, the enclosure was revised or reinforced several times, in particular against the threatening mercenaries of the One Hundred Years War. But its initial layout has been respected : a rectangle measuring approximately 250 metres by 150 metres with a north-west south-easterly orientation. It remains perfectly visible from Combes above the village and especially in the area which lines the current cemetery and the cloister overhanging the Ouche ravine. Here the city walls were also used as retaining walls for the abbey building, which explains their huge schist bonds and buttresses, unknown elsewhere. Only two towers remain almost intact : the one which defended the Vinzelle Gate, to the North-West and the corbelled turret of the cemetery.

Ovens and public fountains

For fear of fire, the bread ovens were put up outside the city walls. Two of them, rebuilt in modern times, still can be found, one in front of the ancient Fumouze Gate at the end of the town, the other one in the ditch which borders the western city walls near the school pathway.
Conques has also the privilege of holding its roman fountains, all of them being designed according to the same pattern. The spring water harnessed by a stone canalization flows into an underground reservoir which is blocked up and covered with a barrel vault. The access opens in the street via a semicircular vault. In the XIIth century, the Guide for pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela indicated the Plô fountain below the church square as follows : "in front of the basilica's door flows an excellent spring which virtues cannot be described." Its reservoir disappears under the square ground as far as the right-hand portal of the abbey-church. The Fumouze fountain which welcomed the pilgrims at the end of their long stage has kept its copings which were devoted to receive buckets. Its superbly cut yellow limestone voussoirs seem to be contemporary with those of the Roman church or the cloister. Finally, the Barry fountain, is also situated outside the walls next to the Rue Charlemagne.

Texts from Jean-Claude FAU
Editions of Beffroi - Regional Council of Aveyron
Photographs from André KUMURDJIAN
Translation from Valérie FABRE