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Origin and history

The convent of the Cordeliers of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde has its origins in a hermitage mentioned in the 15th century near the forest of Hez-Froidmont, in La Neuville-en-Hez (Oise). In 1470, a gentleman from Montigny retired to a chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony, joined by penitents forming the first community. In 1480 Pierre de Bourbon, Count of Clermont, obtained permission from Pope Sixtus V and King Louis XI to establish a Franciscan convent there. The work, completed in three years, culminated in the consecration of the church in 1488, marking the official birth of the convent under the name of Our Lady of the Guard.

In the 16th century, internal conflicts with the Franciscan order threatened the community of dissolution. In the 17th century, the convent turned into a Force House, welcoming prisoners by letter of stamp, then alienated. During the Revolution, despite the closure of religious orders in 1790, he remained active as a psychiatric asylum under the direction of Jean-Éloi Tribou, the last superior who became lay. Sold as a national property in 1799, the site was partially demolished to recover materials, leaving only the Gothic porch, which was listed as historical monuments in 1951.

The archaeological excavations of 1986 reveal an occupation of the site from the Merovingian period, attested by a bone comb discovered near a burial. The convent, organized around a cloister, a church, and conventual buildings to the west, also included vegetable gardens in the east, irrigated by the ru of the Guard. Among the remains missing are the tombs of Raoul de Falize, founder of the convent buried in the church, and d'Annibal de Longueval, local lord who died in 1654. The last elevation structures were destroyed in 1945, leaving only archaeological traces.

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