Sentiers du Patrimoine ®
Commeny
Revenir vers le village par le même chemin jusqu’à la barrière. Tourner à gauche et longer le stade municipal. Le chemin se poursuit par la rue du lavoir que l’on emprunte jusqu’au croisement avec la rue du Fossé-Séguier. L’emprunter sur la droite pour rejoindre la place de la Mare.
Prochain point : Lat. 49.12479, Long. 1.89192
Before the invention of the washing machine, doing the laundry required several days of work. The final stage took place at the washhouse, where washerwomen removed the last stains and rinsed the clothes before taking them home to dry.
This exclusively female task was physically demanding, not to mention the journey from the village, as one woman from Commeny recalled:
“The biggest difficulty was still the laundry: we had to go to the washhouse, located deep in the Gouline woods […]. The washing was loaded into the wheelbarrow and the women went down to the washhouse. The climb back up was hard work with wet laundry! The village women clearly remember the difficulties, especially in winter, when there was snow and ice. One villager owned a donkey and a small cart, which we borrowed to go down to the washhouse. But in snowy weather, the donkey would slip on the way back and we had to push!”
This washhouse has existed for at least 250 years, as it is shown on a plan dating from 1779. This is unusual enough to be worth highlighting, as most communal washhouses were built in the 19th century as part of public health measures and efforts to prevent the spread of disease.
It was nevertheless probably improved during the 19th century to make working conditions more comfortable for washerwomen, with the addition of walls and a roof to protect them from the weather.
Private washhouses also existed, but it is unlikely that Commeny had any, given the village’s position on the plateau, away from natural water sources. The groundwater beneath the plateau reaches the surface in the Gouline ravine, where springs emerge and feed the Gouline stream. The washhouse is supplied by one of these captured springs.
