The Clèrette

The river that runs through Clères has changed names several times over the centuries. On the Cassini map, paper no 24, it was called the Bapaume. It then became the Clère, followed by the Clairette and today it is the Clérette.

It rises at the bottom of La Beauce (to the right of the road from Clères to Cailly, just after the Jean Delacour college) but it may change course, intermittently, by 4 km to beyond Authieu-Rattiéville, during winters of exceptionally heavy rainfall. Several streams run into it along its course and it flows into the Cailly in Montville.

It runs through the village and through the Le Tot hamlet, where it feeds market gardeners’ crops. Three different sources feed the watercress beds.

In the past there were four water mills along its valley, a paper mill, a stain-wood crushing mill (belonging to the Noel family) and two flour mills.

In the 1980s, at the request of Hector de Béarn, the architect Busigny created a lake in the Clères park, benefitting from the construction of the departmental road when the course of the Clérette was diverted.

The Cailly flows through Montville, Malaunay, Le Houlme, Notre Dame de Bondeville, Maromme and Canteleu before flowing into the Seine in Bapaume.

The Clérette broke its banks seven times between 1965 and 1999 causing floods in the village and the hamlets up and down stream and damaging buildings and homes. To prevent future problems of this kind, and after a programme of research, a project was launched for the creation of water retention basins. Seven of these were created with corresponding flood ditches and canalisations. A joint association for the Cailly valley was set up, which later became the Association for the basins and slopes of the Cailly, Aubec and Robec, to study and service the installations in the Clérette and Cailly valleys.

The road to the left of the river in the village is called Marchepied de la Rivière (River Steps Way) in honour of the steps that enabled people to go down to the river to draw water.

The village elders have a saying which runs ‘If you haven’t fallen into the Clérette you don’t come from Clères’, undoubtedly a reference to their childhood days.