Eugène Woillez - Architect historian (19th century)
Studyed and described the church in 1839.
Origin and history
The church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation d'Allonne, located in the Oise region of Hauts-de-France, is a two-ship Catholic parish building. Its oldest parts, dating from the first third of the 12th century, include the primitive Romanesque choir, the base of the bell tower, and elements of the western facade. This Romanesque choir, composed of two square spans, is singularized by its arch vaults, rare in the region, and an archaic carved decoration.
In the 13th century, a new primitive Gothic choir of two spans was added north of the Romanesque choir, with single lancet windows and thin warhead vaults. The 16th century works, documented by notarial markets of 1550, radically transformed the building: the nave and its collateral were rebuilt in a flamboyant, homogenous Gothic style, with wavy pillars, quadripartite vaults, and a western portal decorated with an openwork tympanum inspired by the walk-through of Saint-Étienne de Beauvais. The bell tower, classified as early as 1862, and the entire church in 2006, dominates the building with its Romanesque groves and its beautiful cornice.
The church preserves traces of its turbulent history, such as the crows of the ancient Romanesque cornice visible in the Gothic choir, or the modifications of the nineteenth century, including the destruction of a macabre dance in 1605 and the addition of a niche for a Pietà in 1844. Its partly classified furniture includes paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, a baroque altarpiece, and flamboyant sculpted portal vantals. Today affiliated with the parish "Sainte Madeleine en Beauvais", it bears witness to the architectural and liturgical evolution of Beauvais, from its medieval origins to modern times.
The western, dissymmetric façade illustrates the superposition of the epochs: the Romanesque part in medium apparatus, with its tympanum in opus reticulatum and its bays in full hanger, contrasts with the flamboyant part in cut stone, adorned with curved foothills and a double door gate. Inside, the nave and its collateral communicate through broken arch arches resting on wavy pillars with eight swellings, typical of the Beauvaisian influence. The windows, with complex networks of lancets and bellows, generously illuminate the space, while the Gothic choir, sober, preserves lancets grouped under discharge arches.
The bell tower, 18 meters high without roof, presents a floor of roman belfry with geminied bays surmounted by a cornice beauvaisine, datable around 1200. Its flat buttresses and lack of decoration underline its austerity, while the modillons carved from monster heads or geometric motifs remind local Romanesque traditions. The southern elevation, marked by the 16th century cylindrical staircase turret, also reveals the masonry covers and the differences of apparatus between the Romanesque and flamboyant parts.
The church of Allonne is part of a network of buildings of Beauvais having preserved Romanesque structures while adapting to Gothic evolutions, as in Cauvigny or Villers-Saint-Frambourg. Its history reflects medieval parish dynamics, linked to the chapter of Beauvais Cathedral and Saint-Symphorien Abbey, as well as post-conflict reconstructions, such as the siege of Beauvais in 1472. Today, it remains a major testimony of Picardy religious architecture, combining Romanesque heritage and flamboyant innovations.
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