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Origin and history

The farm of the Longuroye, located in Longvilliers (Pas-de-Calais), is an old barn dependent on the Cistercian abbey of Longvillers, founded in 1135 by Étienne de Blois, king of England and count of Boulogne, with his wife Mathilde. This Savinian monastery, passed under the filiation of Clairvaux in 1147, was a major religious and economic center until its destruction after the Revolution. The farm, dating from the 12th to 13th centuries, is one of the few remaining buildings of the abbey, with the mill and vestiges of the enclosure wall.

Longvillers Abbey had a turbulent history, marked by the wars of the late Middle Ages (English incursions in 1346, 1412, and 1543) and its beginning on an indefinite date. In the 18th century, it housed only a few monks before being sold as a national good and razed, its stones used to build local houses. The farmhouse of La Longuroye, preserved as a 'm monumental gronge', was listed in the inventory of Historic Monuments in 1991 for its emblematic architecture.

The Abbatial site, located in the Dordogne valley, benefited from hydraulic installations created by the monks, including a beef feeding the mill. The latter, transformed into a farm and then a dwelling, illustrates the abbey's economic heritage. The farm of La Longuroye, nicknamed the 'Cathedral of the harvests' for its imposing dimensions, today bears witness to the importance of Cistercian barns in the organization of medieval monastic estates.

A dark episode marked the abbey in 1765 with the arrest of François-Jean Lefebvre de La Barre, accused of sacrilege. This diverse fact, though marginal in the history of the site, reflects the religious tensions of the time. The almost total disappearance of the abbey contrasts with the survival of the farm, a symbol of the resilience of the agricultural heritage in the face of historical upheavals.

The remains still visible (wall of enclosure, mill) and the archives mention a large abbey with a seven-bell tower, highlighting the past richness of the monastery. The Abiette farm in Attin, another conserved but more degraded dependency, recalls the extent of abbatial possessions. These scattered elements are the last witnesses of a monastic ensemble that played a key role in the region for more than six centuries.

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