Heritage of Lévignac
I. In the center of the village
La Halle
The current hall dates from the second half of the 19th century (the previous one was almost in the same location but was arranged in the opposite direction, between the old church and the town hall).
Until the eve of the Second World War, plum markets renowned throughout the region were held there every Wednesday from mid-August to the end of October.
Restored several times, various events are organized there, such as, since 2002, the evening farmers' markets in the summer.
The Old Church
The first church of Lévignac was located near the old market hall, to the south of the square.
Perhaps built as soon as the bastide was created, it was entirely vaulted and composed of a central nave, two aisles, a bell tower, and access was from the north.
As early as 1859, because of its small size and dilapidation, there were plans to replace it with another. Its demolition began around 1868 and the materials collected were largely sold.
The municipality then retained ownership of the location of the nave and the north aisle now occupied by the square.
The Common House
On the north side of the square, on the site of the current bistro-brasserie, the town hall was located until the middle of the 19th century.
Before the Revolution, this is where the jurade, the equivalent of today's municipal council, met, with the difference that its members, consuls and jurats, were not elected by the inhabitants but chosen from among the notables.
The jurade was the link between the central power and the population, and it mainly dealt with local problems such as the maintenance of public buildings or the appointment of "cotisateurs" responsible for setting the amount of taxes and the collectors responsible for collecting them.
The Convent
What is referred to as a “convent” is a group of two houses bequeathed in 1857 by notables from Lévignac to set up a girls’ school that was both denominational and communal, managed by two successive religious congregations until the early 1930s.
In September 1914, the municipality decided to create a military hospital there, which was donated free of charge the following month to the Army Health Service. It was a voluntary hospital with a capacity of twenty beds, where one hundred and seventy sick, wounded or convalescent soldiers were received until October 1917.
In 1915, the writer Charles Derennes, who was the head nurse, received his friend Pierre Benoit, who was convalescing in Toulouse at the time, and tradition has it that he wrote his second novel there, L'Atlantide (1919), which brought him international fame, but these facts are inaccurate.
The name of the two writers was given to the small square in 1991.
Located at 4 rue du Couvent, you can still see its staircase with its upper and lower part.
The Old Castle & the City Hall
Perhaps prior to the foundation of the bastide, the old castle was located within the walls of the town, separated from it by a courtyard and a moat. In the 17th century it consisted of two towers, one round and the other square, a main building and a stable.
Declared national property in 1793, the municipality decided to demolish it and today only a well remains. In 1823, Count Robert de Mac Carthy, the son of the last lord, donated the land to the parish factory (board of directors), which was then shared by two families, and the municipality acquired it in turn in 1855 to build the town hall and, at the back, a boys' school.
From 1911, in place of the teacher's garden, construction began on two new classrooms which operated until the mid-1950s, when the current school complex was completed.
The Patrol Path
The patrol path that starts from the bridge to the south and joins the northern end of the village was probably created towards the end of the 15th century, after the Hundred Years' War, when the safety of goods and people could be ensured.
It is located at the probable location of the ramparts (these still existed in the 16th century) or the ditches that surrounded the bastide. By taking it, you can see the rampart houses which all have a garden below.
The Church
The current church was built between 1865 and 1868 on the site of the old cemetery that was outside the bastide. It was Guillaume Boulin de Laprade, a wealthy landowner born in Lévignac and a lawyer in Bordeaux, who first had the idea for its construction in 1859.
The municipality turned to a renowned Bordeaux architect, Gustave Alaux. The first stone was laid in 1865, it was consecrated in 1868, and it was completely restored in 1956.
In the neo-Gothic style, very fashionable at the time, it has an area of 600 square meters. It is in the shape of a Latin cross and its vaults are ribbed. It consists of a nave with three bays, a transept and a choir with two bays with a flat chevet. The three-story bell tower, topped with a spire, is about thirty meters high. It has a set of beautiful stained glass windows that have recently undergone partial restoration.
The Library
The building opposite the school group was built in the 17th century (the date 1625 was inscribed above a small window that has now disappeared).
The house and its outbuildings were given to the parish council in 1859 to make a presbytery, and this was transferred in 1909 to the municipality, which then established a secular girls' school there.
Since then, the building has been transformed into a home for teachers, into classrooms that were later renovated and now house the library, while the eastern part and the outbuildings have given way to the school canteen.
The Multicentennial Well
In November 2024, during road works, the municipal team discovered an old centuries-old well. It supplied the old public shower baths created in 1938. It was destroyed between the 70s and 80s and covered with a concrete screed. Since then, it has almost been forgotten.
It is a well built in stones 12 meters deep. The masons on site built a riser and laid a coping stone to preserve it. This restoration is likely to revive it, and this rebirth enriches our heritage.
Now, out of oblivion, it becomes precious, it will still be used, and with generosity, to irrigate the plant park of the Bastide and take its full place in the “Village Garden”.
II. Outside The Center
The Sainte Croix Church
Located about three kilometers southeast of the town, the Romanesque church of Sainte-Croix dates from the 13th century. It is composed of a bell tower-wall pierced by an ogival-style portal and two arcades, a nave and a semicircular choir to which a sacristy is attached. The cemetery was located on the land adjoining it.
Until the Revolution, the parish of Sainte-Croix was part of the jurisdiction of Lévignac. Between the beginning of the 19th century and 1919, it was served by the priests of Caubon-Saint-Sauveur, then the church was abandoned and fell into ruin (its demolition was considered in the 1940s), until it disappeared completely under the vegetation.
Between March 1984 and August 1988, with the agreement of the municipality and under the aegis of the association of the Quatre Saisons, a vast construction project was carried out by a team of volunteers and local craftsmen: clearing the site, cleaning the bell tower and walls, clearing the interior, dismantling and reassembling the walls. Safeguarded and enhanced, the site is now maintained, accessible to the public, and events take place there every year.
The Gavache's Well
Taking the Chemin des Bories, about halfway along, you will notice on the left a small circular stone construction with a rounded top and a rectangular opening. This is a “gavache” well.
The term gavache pejoratively refers to foreigners, more precisely immigrants from the langue d’oïl who settled in the pays d’oc. Indeed, in the second half of the 15th century, after the Hundred Years’ War, and at the beginning of the 16th century, following plague epidemics, the southern part of Entre-deux-Mers and the Dropt valley were repopulated by populations from Saintonge, Angoumois and Poitou.
We also speak of the “Gavacherie de Monségur” or the “Petite Gavacherie”, whose specific characteristics such as the language called “marot” or ways of life had almost completely disappeared by the beginning of the 20th century.
This well, but also names of places, families and a specific habitat still bear witness today to the origin of these populations.
The Washhouse of the Lost Stream
Located to the east and a little away from the village (the Ruisseau Perdu flows nearby), this communal washhouse was abandoned for a long time before being restored.
It was probably built around the middle of the 19th century, at a time when the authorities were encouraging the construction of this type of facility in order to develop new hygiene habits following various epidemics.
It is accessed through a shelter made of a wooden frame resting on a pillar and a two-sided roof covered with canal tiles. It opens onto a watertight basin supplied with water, bordered on three sides by a border of sloping flat stones where the laundry was washed, soaped and beaten.
Beyond its primary function, this washhouse was also a place for meetings and conviviality for the village community, the use of which was gradually lost from the 1950s onwards.
The Ragotte
The stele and the historical panel are located about 5 km from the village of Lévignac on the edge of the Gironde, near Taillecavat.
They retrace the history of the tragedy of December 17, 1943:
The Gestapo of Agen and the Feldgendarmes of Marmande invested the farm of La Ragotte to seize a weapons depot hidden in the tobacco drying shed, following a denunciation.
Five people were arrested: the owner Roger Ossard, organizer and head of the Resistance network of Lévignac, his wife Yvette, the clerk Auguste Egron, the servant Juliette Bouhet and Camille Daunis, a draft dodger who fought against the Germans.
They seized another weapons depot at Jacques Estève's farm located nearby, in Saint-Pierre-sur-Dropt, they arrested the clerk Joseph Llo and a neighbor Jean Sounalet. All were deported to Germany. Juliette Bouhet and Joseph Llo would not return from the death camps.
Three resistance fighters were killed that morning: René Maury, a young refractory present at the scene who was trying to flee, as well as Georges Dartiailh and Paul Gabarra, the leaders of the Resistance in the Marmandais, who had gone to the farm and were surprised by the fog.
Since December 17, 1945, these tragic events have been commemorated every year near the stele erected on the Ossard family property.
