The best road cycling routes around Senonches

The Saint-Barthélemy church of Mesnil-Thomas is a religious monument located in the commune of Mesnil-Thomas. This place of worship, like many rural churches, plays a central role in local spiritual and community life. Its architecture and history reflect the religious traditions of the Centre-Val de Loire region, although available sources do not specify its construction period or stylistic characteristics. In the countryside of Centre-Val de Loire, parish churches like Saint-Barthélemy served as gathering points for the inhabitants, marking the highlights of collective life: Sunday masses, religious festivals, and social events. These buildings were often at the heart of village organization, symbolizing both faith and community cohesion. In the absence of detailed historical data, it is difficult to trace the specificities of this church, but its very existence testifies to the importance of religious heritage in this region.

A lovely castle when leaving the Senonches forest in a very cute village.

In Grison stone

The Saint Germain church is located in the heart of the village of Digny in Eure et Loir. It is composed of a large, semicircular wooden nave and a bell tower built of Grison and flint masonry topped by a slate-covered bell tower. Time has taken its toll and caused significant deterioration. Leakage has been observed in the bell tower roof, bays, gutters, and the saddlebag, damaging the framework. Stones are missing or weakened on all the bell tower facades, particularly due to rusty metal elements that are causing them to split. The buttresses are also damaged. Major framework and roofing work on the bell tower was already underway in 2023. Your support has been essential. Today, for the second phase, the work concerns the four facades of the Bell Tower with the restoration of the masonry on the eight buttresses, the creation of the plasterwork, structural work on the bag and the restoration of the bays around the louvers.

A testimony to the rise in France of the monastic order founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict, the village has retained the name of the patron saint of the church, Laumer (or Lomer, or L’Homer), son of a ploughman from the Chartres area, educated and ordained priest by the bishop, who appointed him his treasurer. But his vocation was solitude and prayer. Walking up the Eure valley, he came to retire in 558 to this place lost in the forest, which covered the entire region in the Middle Ages. A few companions joined him to share his life as a hermit. And, in 575, Laumer founded, not far from there, the Corbion monastery, where he adopted the rule of Saint Benedict: the profound joy of an austere existence, shared between prayer, study, sung offices and manual work. This monastery attracted inhabitants from the surrounding area who placed themselves under its protection, in this period often troubled by wars and epidemics. Recalled to Chartres, where he died on January 19, 593, Laumer was buried next to Saint Lubin, who had been the great evangelizing bishop of this diocese. But his faithful monks came to surreptitiously remove the body of their holy abbot to bring it back to the monastery. Three centuries later, fleeing the incursions of the Normans, they took his precious relics to Le Mans, then to Blois, where the great Benedictine abbey of Saint-Laumer was built (the old Romanesque abbey church became the church of Saint-Nicolas de Blois). In the 11th century, the Count of Perche reestablished the old monastery of Corbion, which became a priory under the name of Moûtiers, dependent on the abbey of Blois. And, by a charter of 1159. Rotrou IV grants the monks of Moûtiers "the chapel of St-Lomer-du-Pas with four acres of surrounding land". The current church, remodeled in the 19th century, is curious with its narrow bell tower and its rounded apse, which is the oldest part with three large buttresses in roussat sandstone rubble. In the sacristy you can still see the large stone where, according to tradition, the patron saint had left his footprint. This is probably why he was said to have the gift of curing leg pain. Legend has it that he made the water of the Saint-Lomer fountain gush forth with his stick. And the "stick" surmounted by the statue, like those of the brotherhoods of voluntary singers in other parishes, is always carried by a young boy during processions, especially on the Sunday closest to January 19, when the feast of Saint Laumer is celebrated.

It was heavily remodeled in the 19th century. The bell tower, previously in the center of the roof, was rebuilt as a gable in the 19th century. At that time, the eleven windows were enlarged. Near the Meuvette, to the northeast of the town, are the ruins of an old fortified castle destroyed in 1793.

Arriving at La Framboisière, you can barely make out the church bell tower which blends in with the tops of the majestic trees of the Senonches forest. A privileged location on the edge of the Perche, rather sought after by second homeowners who represent a quarter of the homes.

The castle of Senonches. You will find an information point inside.