The Story of Rouen

by Theodore Andrea Cook

CHAPTER VII

La Rue de la Grosse Horloge

Une rue délicieuse où le monde se pourmène, où tousiours il y ha du vent, de l'umbre et du soleil, de la pluye et de l'amour. Ha! Ha! riez doncques, allez-y doncques! c'est une rue tousiours neufve, tousiours royale, tousiours impériale, une rue patrioticque, une rue à deux trottoirs, une rue ouverte des deux bouts ... brief, c'est la royne des rues, tousiours entre la terre et le ciel, une rue à fontaine, une rue à laquelle rien ne manque pour estre célébrée parmi les rues.

THE cluster of old buildings which are beneath the shadow of the belfry are perhaps better known to strangers than any other piece of architecture in the town. It is the focal point of Rouen, the centre of its civic life, and if you are fortunate enough to live quite close to it, as I did, you will find yourself in the best place for starting on nearly every expedition that your fancy may dictate.[28] The Rue de la Grosse Horloge itself is one of those memorable thoroughfares of which nearly every old French town possesses at least one fascinating example, the kind of street that, in his "Contes Drolatiques," Balzac has so admirably described in making mention of the Rue Royale at Tours. A glance at even the few streets marked upon [Map B] will show its structural importance in the economy of the town. For the Cathedral has stood in different forms upon the same spot since the fifth century, and this street starts from immediately opposite its western gate. In the earliest days it was stopped at the other end by the gate through which the Roman road passed, across the Vieux Marché, towards Caletum (Lillebonne). In later times the Porte Massacre was built there, which takes its name, not from the wholesale murder of the Jews in the adjoining quarter, but from the butchers who congregated close by in the Rue Massacre, or Rue des Machecriers (Wace's word for a butcher), which is called the Rue de la Boucherie-de-Massacre in a title-deed of 1454.

The Place du Vieux Marché is a spot almost as historic in its way as the Parvis of the Cathedral, so that there is interest at both ends of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its most terrible memory is the burning of Jeanne d'Arc, which (as I shall show from Lelieur's plan in a later chapter) took place at the angle of the modern halls, and close to the cemetery of the vanished church of St. Sauveur, on the same spot in the Vieux Marché used since the earliest history of Rouen as one of the many places of public execution. The Rue de la Grosse Horloge has also been called the Grande Rue, and several other names which need not be recorded here; for both by geographical position and in its own right it has always claimed a large share in the interest of the citizens of Rouen.[29] Much of its once beautiful architecture has vanished altogether. The church of St. Herbland, for instance, once stood at its eastern extremity, opposite the Cathedral. But of the Gothic work of 1483 not a stone is to be seen. The stained glass windows were bought by a traveller in 1802, and by him taken to England, after the Revolution had suppressed the Church.

A somewhat better fate has awaited the exquisite example of French Renaissance architecture which used to be at No. 129. Of this very remarkable house, known for uncertain reasons as the Maison de Diane de Poitiers, and certainly worthy of any court beauty of the time, the façade has been carefully preserved in the little square behind the Tour St. André in the Rue Jeanne d'Arc. As the upper storeys project over the road, it must have been built before 1520, the date after which such overhanging constructions were forbidden. Every inch of the wooden surface is covered with delicate arabesques and figures. The proportions of the various storeys are admirably indicated, and the wall-openings grow smaller as they rise, until the whole is crowned with an equilateral triangle, in which a round-headed arch on square pilasters fills the central space. A round medallion with a bust is placed on each side of the second storey windows, and the floors are boldly indicated by deep lines of shadowed carving. The house, of which nothing but this marvellous façade remains, was originally called by the sign of the Cock, and is known to have belonged on the 30th May 1525, to Jean Le Roy, who appears in the parish lists of 1471 as a draper. His son Noël married another of the bourgeoisie, one Marion Ribault; and from her possession until the town bought it from the Hospital, which held it last, the line of title-deeds is unbroken; the important point to notice being that it was built not by a noble, but by a tradesman.[30]

But it is the Grosse Horloge itself that is the jewel of the street. As you look at it from the west you can see constructions built in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in the reign of Henri Quatre, and in the days of Louis Quinze. The Belfry Tower, or Campanile, is, as is fitting to its ancient history, the oldest building of them all. There was a tower here from the earliest days when Rouen had a civic history at all, a "Ban-cloque" to call her citizens together, which is mentioned in the city charters as a symbol of her freedom. First hung here in 1150, the old bell first saved the town in 1174 during the siege by Louis VII. In the next century the bell was recast with the following inscription:—ie suis nomme rouvel rogier le feron me fist fere jehan damiens me fist. This is not without significance, for though the King had given the ground for the new Hôtel de Ville, it was only the Mayor, Le Feron, who in 1258 had a right to order the communal bell which called the citizens to their orderly municipal meetings, or summoned them to revolt against oppression. On the larger bell, originally used as the curfew, are the words:—ie suis nomme cache ribaut martin pigache me fist fere nicole fessart me fist amender jehan damiens me fist. Pigache was Mayor in 1254, and Fessart in 1261.

In February 1381 Rouvel rang for the famous revolt of the "Harelle," and went on ringing the whole time the town was "up." So when young Charles VI. entered angrily by a breach in the Porte Martainville, its treasonable clamour was silenced for some time. For this most blatant of the privileges of the commune was actually taken away altogether. Nor when he pardoned rebellious Rouen could the King be persuaded to give back the bell or allow the belfry he had ruined to be set up. So the citizens humbly besought him that they might "faire une auloge et la fere asseoir ou estoit le Beffroi de la dicte ville," and when King and Bailli had agreed, they craftily built a tower for their "horloge" just like the lost and beloved belfry on the old foundations, and you may read on the bronze plate upon the southern side how this was done when Guillaume de Bellengues was captain of the town, and Jehan la Thuille was bailli for the King. Jehan le Bayeux took nine years to build it as it is shown in Jacques Lelieur's manuscript of 1525.