User:Ww2censor/Lectoure Royal Tannery

The Royal Tannery of Lectoure (Tannerie royale de Lectoure) in French, is a typical eighteenth century industrial building, constructed in 1752 and located in Lectoure (Gers), France. Bestowed the title "Royal tannery" by the king, this business was in operation for almost a century, leaving an architectural site of great interest that in later periods has been used as a distillery, cinema and as a nursing home, and is now privately owned.

Location
The tannery was built in the Royal rue Claude-Ydron, a former consul of the city that gave its name to the neighborhood Ydronne. The name Ydronne (written in different orthographic variants) has remained as the quarter's title since the tannery ceased.

The city ramparts, including a ravelin that defended the southern corner of the medieval walls, is called St. Clair, where there was an abundant water source that could provide for the work of the tannery. Well into the second half of the twentieth century many people fetched their drinking water for consumption there, convinced of its real or supposed virtues, while those from the nearby Diane's fountain had long been declared non-potable.

The tannery buildings and grounds are located under a former triangular bastion that connected to the wall of the ravelin at the southeast corner of the town. The Duclos brothers mentioned this in their request for royal protection, arguing the rampart no longer had any use as fortifications because it had been penetrated by a door at the current street level. These two ramparts forming a right angle are visible on the old plans and can be seen from the air.

The tannery was constructed and organised to take advantage of the steep sloping terrain. Arriving from the town to the north, a pedestrian accesses the second triangular courtyard by a double semi-circular staircase, while the main entrance, at the lowest point of the property in the south, provides vehicular access through a triumphal arch. A long alley, passing between the (now extinct) industrial buildings, the workmen's and director's quarters, led to the first courtyard and the main building. The workshops and manufacturing areas were in the western section.

History
The tannery was built in 1752 and designed by the Toulouse architect Pierre Racine, at the request of the Duclos brothers, rich merchants from Toulouse. Small tanneries already existed in this quarter of Lectoure, then called Hountélie, named after the fountain (also known as the Diane fountain), that supplied the water. These tanneries were located along a narrow sloping alley, that retains the name  Carrelot Merdous  justified by the smell of the tanning process. The most important of these tanneries, owned by the Pérès family, was inherited by the two Duclos brothers, Barthelemy and Joseph, who also bought the neighboring workshops and had the idea of building a proper factory. The new establishment had great ambitions with the benefits of locally bred animals for the supply of skins, the nearby Ramier forest for tree bark to make the tan and the abundant Saint-Clair water supply and the Diane fountain. Close by the tannery also had a mill on the Gers river with two millstones to grind the tan. During the Seven Years War, there was considerable demand by the military for soldiers' shoes and harnesses for the cavalry.

On 30 January 1752, when the bishop of Lectoure Bishop, Claude-François de Narbonne-Pelet, blessed the foundation stone, almost two hundred men worked on the tannery's construction. It was completed the following year and on 22 April 1754, with the support of the steward of Gascony, Antoine Mégret d'Étigny, King Louis XV, issued a letters patent, naming it a royal tannery, with all the attached privileges, such as, exemption from duties and taxes on goods produced, exemption from military service for leaders and workers, exemption from military housing, etc. With about a hundred workers, the establishment operated at full capacity though not without some difficulties. Most workers were highly skilled and were not from the locality, sometimes coming from far away, and their employment was frequently opposed by the local population. While his brother Jean was in Valencia, Spain, Joseph Duclos, one of the directors had problems caused by difficulties with their Toulouse operation, when their Parisian partners went bankrupt 1758.

In 1770, the management was handled by a Lectoure merchant, Druilhet, who became steward, and later partnered with his cousin Darribeau, while the Duclos brothers clashed about the management of the tannery. The epizootic event of 1774 caused difficulties in the supply of skins. Reduced to some sixty workers, the tannery, however, went through the Revolution without too much difficulty. When the Duclos brothers were gone, Pierre Peyrolon, their heir, divested himself of the undertaking due to his lack of knowledge of the business. His son, François, sold the tannery to Druilhet and Darribeau for 46,000 francs.

Under the July Monarchy, the tannery passed into the ownership of the son of Gauran, the Mayor of Lectoure. Due to the increasingly difficult of competing with growing industrialisation, the tannery ceased in the mid-19th century.

20th century
Since then the building has undergone various fortunes. At one time it housed a distillery, between the two world wars, it was a movie theater and after the Second World War, it became a nursing home. Now, privately owned, it stands unoccupied. The Royal Tannery was listed as a French monument historique on February 22, 2006.

Architecture
Pierre Racine's plans bear witness to a concern for a rational organisation that leaves its share in aesthetics. The completed property did not achieve all the expected objectives (for example, there were fewer basins than the plan indicates), but it remains exemplary of a pre-industrial architecture in Age of Enlightenment.

One reaches the tannery by the royal road, half-way between the Gers plain and the eastern entrance of the town. We pass through a gate in the form of a triumphal arch with an arc in a segment of a circle, surmounted by a triangular pediment, in the center of which an escutcheon shows the royal arms and date 1754. Below, a cartridge had the inscription "MANUFACTURE ROYALE", now missing. A long driveway leads to the main building raised on a terrace.

The main building occupies the upper part of the property, to the north. It is a long rectangle, crossed by a vaulted central passage surmounted by a circular pediment bearing a clock (now gone) that measured the work hours. The clock was surmounted by three small bells on supporting ironwork, adorned with silhouettes of carved metal depicting the Virgin surrounded by two angels sounding a trumpet. The one-storey building is covered with a saddle-roof. The dwelling joined this building at the back east and south. On the side of the small northern courtyard, at each end of the building, stands a small pavilion with a roof with four slopes and dormers, the facade of which is convex. These pavilions made it possible to occupy the acute angle formed by the main facade and the walls of the courtyard.

Coming from the town, one enters the small courtyard by a monumental door followed by a staircase with double revolution. The yard, like the building and the upper part of the plot, is bounded on the west by a vestige of oblique rampart, that continues at right angles and which was to join the wall of the half-moon, A door on the current street, also missing today but are noted on Pierre Racine's plans. On the back of the front of the front door again is the date 1754 and the inscription "MANUFACTURE ROYALE". To the left of the staircase, a wicket is surmounted by the date 1754 and the inscription engraved in the stone: "PARLE AV SVISE", encouraging the visitor to address the concierge at lodge is close by. In the curve of the staircase is a fountain, the water of which came from the Saint-Clair source situated a little higher.

References and sources

 * Notes


 * Sources
 * Histoire de Lectoure, edited by Maurice Bordes et Georges Courtès, Lectoure, 1972.
 * Collectif, Sites et monuments du Lectourois, Auch, printed by Bouquet, 1974
 * Maurice Bordes, Les Frères Duclos et la tannerie royale de Lectoure au XVIIIe siècle, Bulletin du comité des travaux historiques, 1954, p. 91-102