The cotton spinning mill of the meadows

Throughout the 19th century, Fontaine-le-Bourg, lived to the pace of the textile industry which guaranteed its development and prosperity. The Cailly, which flows through the village, initially supplied the energy necessary for the industrial plants and enabled the construction of six cotton mills.

The cotton mill of the meadows was built in 1833 by Elie de Boutteville. His successor, François Delamare-Debouteville, developed it considerably and then sold it in 1893 to Emile Dantan. All its activity terminated  at the end of the1950s.

In 1967 the site became a production unit of the Legrand electrical equipment company. The original mill was totally transformed into a vast modern factory with state of the art technology,  but certain sheds that are witness to its past still remain.

The advent of the shed was directly linked to the industrial revolution of the 19th century. The need for large well-lit spaces for the shop floors, at a time when electricity was rare, led the architects to use this solution. A shed (an English word) means a hut, a cabin or a hangar. In academic French this is a structure with a saw-tooth roof. The roof is actually formed by a series of roofs each with two differently sloping sides. The shortest mside is glazed, generally covering an industrial shop floor. The shed thus enables  light to penetrate into the heart of the shop floor. In the northern hemisphere the glazed roofs face north, where light is constant, and protect the workers from overheating and  sunglare.

In English, apart from the word ‘saw-tooth’, the meaning  is further explicit in the word ‘northlight roof’’. Another function of the shed was linked to training on the factory tool machines.

During the 19th century energy was supplied by a steam machine. This was an external combustion thermal machine which transformed thermal energy, created by water vapour from steam boilers, into mechanical energy. The machine was solid and powerful, but also expensive and cumbersome. It was installed at the end of the building and was the sole source of motor power in any factory. To supply the various machines on the shop floor the steam machine, via flat belts in textile, or leather, and rubber, drove a series of pulleys and cross shafts installed on the wall chains just beneath the roof.