Auvers-sur-Oise, Église Notre-Dame

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    History

    The church has its origins in a royal chapel given in 1131 by Louis VI to the canons of S-Vincent of Senlis, a link that survived until the Revolution. Notre-Dame coexisted with a parish church (S-Martin) which disappeared in the thirteenth century. The church, adjacent to a royal château, was built on a terrace which once also accommodated the houses of the parish, priory and abbey of Montmartre, to which Philip Augustus gave the grosses dîmes of the parish. Adélaïde of Savoie, wife of Louis VI, was dame d'Auvers. She was perhaps patroness of church.

    Date

    Begun ca. 1100

    Plan

    A four-bay aisled nave is intersected by a projecting transept. The choir has one full bay followed by an apse with apsidal chapels on either side -- the southern chapel was transformed in the sixteenth century.

    Elevation

    The nave has a three-story elevation with cylindrical columns and a band triforium, a bit like Taverny

    Chronology

    The oldest part of the church (c1100) may be found in the piers of the crossing which support the central tower (the south-east pier replaced 16th-C). The lower parts of the choir may belong to the same period, but the upper parts were rebuilt in the mid-twelfth century. Central tower c.1180-90. The nave was built in the decades around 1200 reaching the western frontispiece by 1225.

    Bideault, M. and Lautier, C., Ile-de-France gothique, I, Paris, 1987, 54-61,
    Lambin, Emile, "L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise," Les églises de l'Ile-de-France, Paris, 1898, 34-39
    Lefevre-Pontalis, E., "Eglise d'Auvers-sur-Oise," Congrès archéologique, 82, 1919, 70-76.
    Régnier, Louis, "Auvers-sur-Oise," Excursions archéologiques dans le Vexin français, Evreux, 1922, 78-99.
    Somers, Agnès and Crrnokrak, Cathérine, Vallée du Sausseron, Auvers-sur-Oise, Paris, 1992