Informations directionnelles

Laissez l’hôpital sur votre gauche, continuer dans la rue Carnot, puis prendre la deuxième rue à gauche. A l’angle de ces deux rues, vous aurez sur votre gauche la maison dite d’Henri II.

Former Benedictine Convent
Convents sprung up in seventeenth century Vexin

 

 

Religion left its mark on the urban landscape...

After a tumultuous hundred years marked by the Wars of Religion and attempts to reorganise the Church, there was a sharp increase in the number of religious buildings in seventeenth century Magny-en-Vexin. Convents were built on the last free land inside the fortified town with the Cordeliers, Annonciades, Benedictines and Ursulines in turn taking up residence. In 1639 the Benedictines took possession of a property comprising a chapel, several blocks of buildings and gardens. But in 1645 the prioress, who was not happy in Magny-en-Vexin, left the convent along with 45 sisters. The depletion of the community enabled the Ursulines to buy some of the buildings - and thus began a quarrel between the two orders that was to last a hundred years until, in 1745, the archbishop of Rouen dissolved the Sainte Anne des Bénédictines priory. The Hôtel-Dieu was then transferred to the former convent.

 

 

... a building devoted to medical care and learning

The convent was converted into a hospice run by lay administrators. Some of the buildings housed a school from 1740 to 1793, where the children were taught the rudiments of Latin without charge. In 1820 the school was transformed into a hospital-cum-hospice, managed by three successive religious congregations. Ten years later, the focus shifted from treating the sick to teaching children. Renovation and expansion work was undertaken in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the remains of the old convent and the Sainte Anne chapel were demolished in 1880. Two wings were added to the main building, which took the form that we know today. During World War I, the institution was used as a military hospital for treating about 1,500 war injured. In 1994 the hospital, with 552 beds, became the Centre Hospitalier du Vexin (CHV).