Maison de Beaumont
MonumentHidden Treasure
In the heart of Beaumont-du-Périgord, these 14th-century medieval houses are set against the ramparts of a royal bastide, providing a rare example of Perigordian Gothic civil architecture.
History
In the royal bastide town of Beaumont-du-Périgord, founded in 1272 by the English seneschal Lucas de Thanay on behalf of Edward I of England, a group of medieval houses is one of the most authentic examples of 14th-century civil architecture in the Dordogne. Listed as Historic Monuments since 1952, these houses form a remarkably coherent urban fabric, where golden stone and Gothic silhouettes blend into the orthogonal layout characteristic of Gascon fortified towns. What makes this ensemble truly exceptional is its close relationship with the medieval rampart: some of the buildings are built directly onto the town's defensive curtain wall, thus integrating the wall as a load-bearing or back wall. This practice, common in medieval bastides but rarely preserved with such clarity, offers visitors a lesson in military and civil architecture in a single glance. The boundary between the bourgeois home and the city's collective fortress is blurred here, forming a single built entity. The best way to discover these houses is on foot, wandering through the gridded streets of the bastide. The facades still bear traces of their medieval past, with cushioned windows, pointed arches and carefully dressed ashlar surrounds. A careful stroll will reveal the successive additions and alterations that bear witness to seven centuries of continuous occupation. The buildings stand in natural harmony with the imposing church of Saint-Front, an eloquent example of Anjou Gothic architecture, which dominates the central square of the bastide. Around these houses, Belmont-du-Périgord offers an unspoilt setting, far removed from the reconstructions that have disfigured so many historic centres. Visitors can experience the rare privilege of strolling through a town whose layout and buildings have hardly changed since the Middle Ages, and where every stone tells the story of the daily lives of the merchants and craftsmen who kept the English bastide trading.
Architecture
The architecture of these houses reflects the canons of 14th-century Périgord medieval civil construction. Built in local limestone, with warm tones ranging from beige to golden depending on exposure and age, they have plain but elaborate facades, pierced with bays that are characteristic of the Gothic period: mullioned windows, pointed arch openings or depressed semi-circular arches, sometimes topped with moulded dripstones designed to keep rainwater away. The ground floor traditionally housed a shop or workshop, opening onto the street through wide arcades that some facades still have. The most remarkable feature of this complex remains its integration into the bastide's defensive system. Where the medieval ramparts form the rear or side walls of the dwellings, the considerable thickness of the masonry - sometimes more than two metres - gives the buildings remarkable strength and thermal inertia. This symbiosis between military and domestic architecture can be seen in the way the buildings are laid out: the careful layout of the ramparts, made up of regular rubble stones and ashlar quoins, contrasts or blends in with the civilian buildings added against or on top of the wall. The interior volumes, although largely transformed over the centuries, still retain traces of Gothic fireplaces in places, barrel vaults in the cellars dug into the rock, and portals with prismatic mouldings typical of the Southern Gothic style. The ensemble is therefore a first-rate architectural document for understanding how the inhabitants of an English bastide organised their living space in the wake of the urban development of the central Middle Ages.
Related Figures
Édouard Ier d'Angleterre — duc d'Aquitaine, commanditaire de la fondation de la bastide de Beaumont en 1272Lucas de Thanay — sénéchal anglais chargé de la fondation et de l'organisation de la bastideLes bourgeois bâtisseurs du XIVe siècle — marchands et artisans qui élevèrent ces demeures contre les rempartsLes inspecteurs des Monuments Historiques du XXe siècle — acteurs de la reconnaissance patrimoniale ayant conduit à l'inscription de 1952
