I was surprised to read just a minute ago, on French Wikipédia, that the population of Saint-Aignan declined from 3,500 in 1999 to 2,800 in 2016. That's a decrease of 20 per cent. Maybe that's because with the growth in attendance at the big Beauval zoo just south of town, more and more houses are being turned into vacation rentals for tourists.
I took these photos from the other side of the Cher River, over in Noyers-sur-Cher. The population of Noyers has increased, but only slightly, over the same period while Saint-Aignan's has been declining. The body of water here is called Le Lac des Trois Provinces, which is the western endpoint of the old Canal de Berry.
Saint-Aignan has existed since about the year 1000, when the first fortifications and the first church were built on the hill here overlooking the Cher River. The big château was built during the French Renaissance of the 1500s. It's privately owned and not open to the public.
Nowadays, the Cher River and the Canal de Berry are no longer navigable except for short sections and for very small boats. Trains that run from the city of Tours (35 miles west of Saint-Aignan) and on to the city of Lyon (200 miles to the east) stop at the Saint-Aignan-Noyers station. You can ride all the way to Lyon without any train changes, but the voyage takes about five hours — about an hour longer than driving your car.
The loss of seven hundred people over twenty years is enormous for such a small town. The birth rate must have been especially low and the death rate especially high in addition to people moving out and not being replaced. I wonder if les gens du voyage were counted in the general population in 1999 and if they moved out after the riots a few years ago?
ReplyDeleteAlso, it would be interesting to know if the number of feux has decreased or not in the same proportion.
DeleteBy feux do you mean traffic lights, or something else?
DeleteI'm not sure there were or are any, or at least not very many, gens du voyage living in Saint-Aignan. There are some in Noyers and some in Selles, as well as in Pouillé.
Oh, and the population of Mareuil has increased from 950 to about 1,150 over the same number of years — +20%.
DeleteFeux, in this case, is an old French term for ménages or households!
DeleteAs far as Mareuil is concerned, do you suggest some people left the bustling metropolis for peace and quiet less than two miles away?
DeleteI thought that feux might mean foyers but I wasn't sure. Sounds like 18th or 19th century usage.
DeleteYou know, the woman we bought our house from lived for 15 or 20 years with her husband in an apartment in Saint-Aignan, not much more than 2 miles from here. This was their "summer place." And as you know, our neighbors who own the house across the street, which is their summer place, live in Blois, which is just 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan.
I thought feux was fires, lol. I love the pollarded trees along the banks of the river in the last photo. Perhaps lindens?
ReplyDeleteThose trees might be plane trees — platanes. Not sure. And feux, yes, fires in the sense of fireplaces, meaning homes or households.
DeleteAccording to Susan, in a blog on Saturday, 7 June 2008 titled Les Trognes, pollarded trees live much longer than unpollarded trees.
DeleteYour description of someone living in town and having a "summer place" only two miles away sound a bit like lots in the US. There are people in a number of medium and even larger cities who do that.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's a correlation between loss of rail service and decline in a town's population. I like the idea that you can take a train from your area direct to Lyon, longer in time perhaps but so much more pleasant than having to deal with highways.
I had an uncle who had a weekend, summer, vacation place — he called it his "camp" — that was a little house on a coastal creek just about 20 miles from his house in Morehead City. He would go there to fish and would bring home big buckets full of blue crabs.
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