Guided tour of the church and communal wells of Poulainville
The church In 1851, Louis Charles Antoine Lépine, brother of the parish priest, made a bequest of 10,000 Fr to the commune to allow the construction of a new church. Hard hit by the cholera epidemic, the population, which was 542 inhabitants in 1841, fell to 330 in 1881, despite the many births. In 1849, the epidemic took François Auguste LÉPINE, parish priest of Poulainville, brother of the generous donor. All this meant that the project of reconstruction was not mentioned before the arrival of a new mayor, still under the Second Empire, but twelve years after the bequest. The architect Victor Deleforterie was commissioned to make the plans. In 1868, the construction of the new church of Poulainville was begun. It was completed in 1870 and received in 1871. The church, of neo-Gothic style, is built of brick and covered with slate with stone highlights. The western façade is surmounted by a bell tower-porch finished in arrow covered with slate.
It consists of a single nave and a choir.
Communal wells Essential for obtaining drinking water on the plateau, the wells were difficult and costly to build because it was necessary to dig deep into the chalk to reach the water table. To do this, the inhabitants gathered and settled around the well, property of the municipality. Masonry, with a square-shaped sandstone coping, the wells were covered by a two-sided wooden roof. In Poulainville, their average depth is forty metres.