Abbaye de Boschaud

The place name Boschaud is derived from the Latin boscum cavum, meaning a thinned forest (boscum = bush, small forest and cavus = empty, hollowed out). The former monastery can still be found today in a clearing in the forests located between Villars and Quinsac.

Boschaud Abbey is located immediately northeast of the hamlet of Boschaud, which bears the same name, on a ridge about 175 meters above sea level. It can be reached via a communal road that branches off to the left from the D 98 (Villars-Quinsac) shortly after the center of Villars and then follows a dry valley running northwest for 1.5 kilometers uphill. After passing through a wooded area, a larger clearing opens up with the monastery and the associated hamlet. The road then reaches the ridge line at an altitude of about 200 meters and merges there again with the D 98, which then leads down to Quinsac. The monastery was built on redeposited river gravels from the Pliocene or Pleistocene, but the building blocks – predominantly white rudist limestones from the Angoumian (Turonian) – first had to be sawn out by hand in more distant quarries and then transported.

The monastery was founded in 1145 by Géraud de Sales on the site of an older hermitage and joined the Cistercian order in 1163, according to unconfirmed reports as a daughter monastery of Châtillon Abbey in Lorraine. In any case, it belonged to the filiation of the primary abbey of Clairvaux. Its economic situation is said to have never been brilliant. However, it owned the granges of Riocaud and Saint-Jean-de-la-Lande, as well as a priory in La Chapelle-Saint-Robert and mills. In the 14th century, it was besieged and plundered. It also suffered during the Hundred Years' War. Its subordination to the commendam accelerated its decline. During the French Revolution, it was sold in 1791 and served as a barn, dwelling, and quarry. It was only classified as a Monument historique in 1950. The monastery is preserved by the Club du Vieux Manoir.

Part of the church, built between 1154 and 1159, thus before joining the Cistercian order, in the form of a Latin cross, has been preserved. The crossing bears a dome, the vaults of the transept and the chapels were almost completely renewed in style internally – but over-concreted externally. The nave was also – probably uniquely in medieval Cistercian architecture – originally vaulted by pendentive domes. The monastic building is almost completely preserved but has lost its roof. The chapter house had a wooden flat ceiling. It opens to the cloister with a pointed-arch portal, flanked on both sides by twin windows. The parlatorium has a door to the cloister and to the garden.