Claville-Motteville

The Priest's School, created by the Breton artist Olivier Perrin around 1808 – Credit: Musée départemental breton

Who today would imagine that long before village classrooms were built by the local council, rural schoolchildren learned to read directly from their parish curate between services? In Claville-Motteville, schooling has roots that go far deeper than the late 19th-century secular state reforms. It reveals a forgotten era when local education rested squarely on parish initiative and church finances.

Under the Ancien Régime, teaching fell not to civilian masters, but to curates. In September 1714, during a pastoral visit, Archbishop d'Aubigné specifically urged Claville’s priest to hire a schoolmistress for the education of local girls. Decades later, a parish resolution of 1783 reveals a very practical approach to school funding: churchwardens decided to build oak pews inside the church. The plan was simple: lease the seats and use the rent to pay the curate or parish clerk, who was in turn bound to run the village school for boys and girls alike. In nearby Gouville, which was later merged into Claville, parish records likewise show church funds being drawn upon to repair its own schoolhouse.

Following the French Revolution, village teaching gradually transitioned to civilian schoolmasters trained in teacher training colleges. Claville saw its share of remarkable figures: Monsieur Colombel; Monsieur De Hurpy, whose life ended violently in murder; Monsieur Louis Lemaistre, who taught generations of children over four decades; and Narcisse Désiré Planchon, appointed in 1860.

The buildings themselves had unexpected beginnings. Before a new presbytery was built in the 19th century, earlier parish priests lived in a house near the village cross that was subsequently repurposed as the girls' school. By 1888, schooling was divided between two separate premises: a girls' school adjoining the town hall and a boys' school, both established in private properties. Religious orders also played their part: in the 1840s, a teaching nun fell gravely ill and was cared for thanks to donations from local estate owners, Letellier and de La Londe. To broaden access to reading, Father Jules Cellier established a parish library in 1872, bringing in an initial batch of fifty volumes to circulate among local households.