Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 250

This collection of twenty-two papers offers a kaleidoscopic view of the main issues which confront those wishing to update or renovate villages, houses or agricultural buildings. One might have imagined that France’s greater area might reduce the number of issues and make the task easier; not so. Some villages and towns need renewal because of population expansion or earlier, unwise planning permissions. To increase in scale, farms need modern buildings and mechanized systems to house larger herds or greater crops. Ancient buildings need sensitive conversion or renewal to allow them to remain in the countryside. Above all, each area’s character needs to be considered and conserved.

The authors are drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines. Their papers are grouped under six broad titles: buildings and rural modernization; the historical and archaeological study of buildings; buildings seen from within; aspects of modernization; case studies of agricultural buildings and aspects of landscape representation. Overall, the papers cover ten regions and include both lowland and upland sites. In each group the papers explore different aspects of the same theme, but not necessarily in logical or chronological progression. Mainly stock-keeping and viniculture issues are discussed with little mention of any arising from intensive arable cultivation.

Space is the linking theme. Farmers’ need for more modern and usually larger buildings affects, in different ways, the area around them. Farm buildings are still present in many villages and small towns, how are farms to expand here? Solutions which involve moving them into the surrounding area create other problems: how to disperse them, where to put them, whether to create a farming enclave or to scatter the buildings in smaller units. For larger, modern buildings, careful decisions about using modern materials in buildings of traditional shape, and siting them sensitively into the landscape, are necessary. Many villages and small towns now sprawl where originally they were organized round a natural centre. How can those centres be regained while allowing the settlements modern amenities and further expansion? How can empty building space within the sprawl be used? A table of acronyms distinguishes one method of legal approach from another.

Rural buildings, such as the traditional buildings of the Franche-Comté in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, are considered from an historical and archaeological point of view. Important questions concerning the use of archive and material are posed. Can we be sure the documents themselves are reliable – do they describe an original building or one that had already been enlarged or adapted? In villages formerly razed by warfare in earlier centuries had the buildings been rebuilt in their original forms? Careful use of archival, archaeological and architectural information is necessary. When Iron Age buildings in the northern Alps are considered, the documents are rock engravings, the texts of classical Latin and Greek authors or the ground plans of excavated buildings and the study of palaeo-botanical remains. Whereas Roman villas, their plan forms and the agricultural buildings built alongside them through to Gallo-Roman times, are amply described, the dearth of detailed knowledge about buildings which may have existed in the Early Middle Ages is acknowledged and deplored. Documents start to become available in the twelfth century but many have yet to be discovered and studied for any architectural detail. Do we correctly understand the terminology used? Archaeological excavation could help, but far too little rescue archaeology has been directed towards rural buildings. In the Caen plain developer-archaeology has revealed many thirteenth- to fifteenth-century sites, but most were only partially excavated. Correlation between archives and archaeology then becomes impossible. Furthermore many developer reports have yet to be consulted for their historical information.

Practical considerations include the use of tile or thatch for roofs; how did ventilation and ergonomic layout influence the size and disposition of agricultural buildings and how were these needs translated into different regional styles? Using the Breton farmstead as an example, did the different farming roles played by men and women influence the layout of the farmstead. Also studied is the disposition of farmsteads in Languedoc: grouped or dispersed? In the mountains, however, buildings shelter families, animals and crops. Their farmsteads are isolated by the terrain and their evolution and modern forms are both studied.

As younger generations take over farms, adaptation and reconstruction of the buildings are needed to achieve modernization. They aim to rationalize work to create a more ergonomic system. Where buildings need to be replaced because for years little or nothing had been done to keep them in good repair, the new buildings have to fit into their surroundings. Where old buildings can be retained, additions are made. Then many spread out from the original site, making a large farmstead where harmonization is difficult to achieve. Contrastingly, in the mountains, the traditional form of the chalet has frequently been adopted, adapted to domestic use and overused as a ‘traditional local style’ whose elements have been incorporated into non-rural buildings such as blocks of flats. Elsewhere its essential elements: use of timber in construction, cladding, roof lines and sense of space have been designed into modern buildings of the area.

Finally, how do farmers themselves see the landscape? The discussion centres on views taken with disposable cameras, views which they considered important for six reasons: landscapes which belonged, seemed right; where changes were for the better or where they were explicable in terms of progress. They were also asked to consider past and future changes and those which were inevitable in order for farming progress to be made.

Our countries share many of the problems, but our area is less.