The engine room of the Levavasseur mill, now stripped of mechanical objects, offers a wonderfully inhabited space of an active era, which was thought to be noisy, now immersed in an atmosphere where nature has regained its rights.” Sébastien Preschoux
As Sébastien Preschoux points out, the peaceful silence that currently reigns on the site makes it possible to imagine the agitation that was to constitute the atmosphere of this industrial site where up to 300 workers worked at the same time. The astonishing silhouette of Charles Levavasseur’s textile factory, majestic and unique in its kind, rises there, on an island formed by the floodway, and the natural course of the Andelle. On the two largest buildings, built of bricks and stones in the neo-Gothic style of the 19th century, rose windows and bay windows in pointed arches that recall the religious architecture of the Middle Ages. They often lead the walker to confuse its ruins with that of the abbey of Fontaine-Guérard, located nearby. These singular details, which make its charm, lead the factory to its loss when on Sunday, August 23, 1874, probably by a magnifying effect produced by the crossing of the stained glass windows by the rays of the sun, the balls of cotton catch fire. The fire of the great mill caused the floors and the wooden beams to burn. Only the masonry remained. The spinning shop must therefore be moved into the small spinning mill. The story goes on in spite of everything: in 1923, the construction of the Diesel engine building, or engine room, made it possible to shelter the engines that would supply the mill with energy. A new fire, in 1946, will take over the industrial activity on the site, which then definitively ceases.