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Saint-Dizier-la-Tour
Saint-Dizier-la-Tour (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ dizje la tuʁ]; Auvergnat: Sent Desíer la Tor) is a commune in the Creuse department in central France. It is particularly noted for its heritage: three feudal mottes, the documentation that has survived about its early past, and the archaeological finds of everyday military and domestic articles discovered when two of the mottes were excavated. There is also evidence of the medieval priory and various Roman remains.
The commune of St Dizier la Tour is in the department of the Creuse, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of central France. It lies close to the medieval town of Chénérailles and the 15th-century château de Villemonteix.
It is essentially rural, consisting of two former communes, La-Tour-St-Austrille (now known simply as “La Tour”) and St Dizier, which were united in 1848 because they were both considered too small to be viable. It is crossed by two Gallo-Roman roads and two large streams, the Goze and the Verreau. The Goze gave its name to the nearby town of Gouzon and the village of Gouzougnat.
On the banks of the Goze are the remains of numerous Roman settlements and villas which were equipped with their own large artificial pools or étangs. The village of La-Tour-St-Austrille grew up at the first crossing-point of the Goze, which starts a few kilometres away at La Faye and passes through a glacial valley. The stream was originally surrounded by marshland.
The Roman road that comes from Limoges via Ahun splits into two to the east of Villemonteix. One route goes to Bourges and passes Châtelus, Parsac and Toulx-St-Croix, which is the way that Saint Martial, the bishop who evangelised the Limousin, came from Bourges in the 4th century. The second road goes to Neris-les-Bains, south of Montluçon, via Gouzon, Chambon-sur-Voueize and Evaux-les-Bains.
These two important roads deliberately followed the dry land along the crest of the hills and there must have been spur roads linking them. As La Tour-St-Austrille is the first practical place where it was possible to cross the Goze, it is likely to have been the first southerly link. The connecting path went across the dam of a Roman lake near the remains of a Roman villa called Caceria.
By the mid-950s, more than a century after the death of Charlemagne, his far-reaching Carolingian Empire was a distant memory, split by internal divisions, power struggles and land seizures. A multitude of large and small warlords, who laid claim to the lands, started to build feudal mottes as a sign of their power but also as watchtowers monitoring channels of communication and places for extracting tolls from travellers.
The area in which the territory of La-Tour-St-Austrille stood was border country called La Marche – “the frontier” – which acted as a buffer zone for the Duchy of Aquitaine against the neighbouring powers. La Tour-St-Austrille itself was part of Aquitaine, and only slightly further north was the kingdom of France, with the frontier fluctuating between Boussac and Parsac.
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Saint-Dizier-la-Tour
Saint-Dizier-la-Tour (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ dizje la tuʁ]; Auvergnat: Sent Desíer la Tor) is a commune in the Creuse department in central France. It is particularly noted for its heritage: three feudal mottes, the documentation that has survived about its early past, and the archaeological finds of everyday military and domestic articles discovered when two of the mottes were excavated. There is also evidence of the medieval priory and various Roman remains.
The commune of St Dizier la Tour is in the department of the Creuse, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of central France. It lies close to the medieval town of Chénérailles and the 15th-century château de Villemonteix.
It is essentially rural, consisting of two former communes, La-Tour-St-Austrille (now known simply as “La Tour”) and St Dizier, which were united in 1848 because they were both considered too small to be viable. It is crossed by two Gallo-Roman roads and two large streams, the Goze and the Verreau. The Goze gave its name to the nearby town of Gouzon and the village of Gouzougnat.
On the banks of the Goze are the remains of numerous Roman settlements and villas which were equipped with their own large artificial pools or étangs. The village of La-Tour-St-Austrille grew up at the first crossing-point of the Goze, which starts a few kilometres away at La Faye and passes through a glacial valley. The stream was originally surrounded by marshland.
The Roman road that comes from Limoges via Ahun splits into two to the east of Villemonteix. One route goes to Bourges and passes Châtelus, Parsac and Toulx-St-Croix, which is the way that Saint Martial, the bishop who evangelised the Limousin, came from Bourges in the 4th century. The second road goes to Neris-les-Bains, south of Montluçon, via Gouzon, Chambon-sur-Voueize and Evaux-les-Bains.
These two important roads deliberately followed the dry land along the crest of the hills and there must have been spur roads linking them. As La Tour-St-Austrille is the first practical place where it was possible to cross the Goze, it is likely to have been the first southerly link. The connecting path went across the dam of a Roman lake near the remains of a Roman villa called Caceria.
By the mid-950s, more than a century after the death of Charlemagne, his far-reaching Carolingian Empire was a distant memory, split by internal divisions, power struggles and land seizures. A multitude of large and small warlords, who laid claim to the lands, started to build feudal mottes as a sign of their power but also as watchtowers monitoring channels of communication and places for extracting tolls from travellers.
The area in which the territory of La-Tour-St-Austrille stood was border country called La Marche – “the frontier” – which acted as a buffer zone for the Duchy of Aquitaine against the neighbouring powers. La Tour-St-Austrille itself was part of Aquitaine, and only slightly further north was the kingdom of France, with the frontier fluctuating between Boussac and Parsac.