The construction site(work) of restoration(catering) of the priory Saint-Pierre-js-Liens exists today for more than 24 years. Every year, for a month of summer, young people offer a day, a week or even one month to rebuild this too long forgotten chapel. In the course of these 24 years of construction site(work), it is more than 1 200 young people who worked on this site.
The history(story) of the chapel, only remaining element of the priory, is in itself astounding.
Built in the XIth century on the lands of the Lord Batsemarus as part of big(great) clearance and of religious romanization of Brittany by the monks of Marmoutier, it is first chapel of a small priory. At about the XIIth century, following an exchange of earth(ground) between the abbey of Marmoutier and the chapter of the cathedral of Nantes, she(it) becomes parish church of a new parish and, seems t-il, extended. A few decades later, the market town being transplanted in 500 metres, on the coteaux of the Loire, it becomes secondary chapel but keeps(preserves) its parish registers. In 1790, she(it) is sold as very national and bought by the family of the local solicitor to save it from destruction. Restored in the parish, she is again nationalised during the famous law of August 1st, 1793, then restored to her owners before being again re-nationalised in 1797. Acquired(Bought back) by the same family, she(it) is made available of the parish which, further to the laws of 1905, is ruined and ceases maintaining her(it). Abandoned(Given up), delivered to bad weather and to spitefulness, she(it) is fast in ruin all the more as the hellish column the Cordelier burnt her(it) down to burn some inhabitants' tens there who(which) had taken refuge there. She(It) was then badly restored and over the years, a waste reception centre became.
The first work consisted in bringing out(in loosening) the building(ship) so many(much) filth, among which two carcasses of car, as crazy herbs and trees which had taken ownership of places. The building(ship) was extremely fragile and threatened even to collapse: the levelled walls had dissociated themselves, foothills, unsealed, played no more their role, the downstrokes(jambs) of doors and of windows had disappeared or were strongly harmed. Emergency was to attend to the most urgent things first. The modus operandi, in this kind(genre) of situation, is always the same: it is necessary to strengthen, to disassemble(take down) and to stabilise the expanding walls, to reconstruct downstrokes(jambs). In a few weeks, the building(ship) is stabilised, healed and went back up(raised), then the composed roofing.
The study of the ground reveals then the existence of a sacristy and of a closing the base of walls of which for first one(night) and setting-up(presence) for second is discovered. The president of the association, Reynald Secher, decides then to reconstruct the set(group) by doubling it of surface. They pass then of a work of restoration(catering) to a reconstruction then to a construction. Project is huge but fascinates especially as it is accompanied by an impressive documentary research work, by reflexion and by imagination.
Twenty construction sites(works) follow which give birth(rise) to three crypts, of which an octagonal, the construction of the walls of the closing, more than 70 metres of underground passages, the pose(installation) of staircases and the erection of a cloister.
Beyond restoration(catering) as such, this construction site(work) is much more because it is a question at once of provoking interest in heritage for these young people, to initiate them to works of restoration(catering) or of simple protection(saving), to train(form) them so that they take them even the initiatives which stand out where they are. Grace in it a good many of building(ship) across France were saved.