Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

La Maison des marais is a herbary farm built in 1773 in Marchesieux, in the Marais du Cotentin and Bessin Regional Natural Park. This building in a sandstone basement, covered with a stubble roof, embodies the architectural block-to-earth model widespread in the 18th to 19th centuries. It grouped under one roof (30 m long) a house, a barn, a press, a cellar, a cart and hay barns, reflecting the autonomy of marsh farms.

Acquired by the commune in 1987, the farm was restored between 1987 and 1994 by the Adame des Marais (Association for the Development and Development of the Marais and the Environment), which made it an eco-museum. Classified as a historic monument in 2011, it now presents pre-mechanized agricultural traditions, breeding and collective management of the marshes, characteristic of this humid region between Saint-Lô and Périers.

The architecture, exceptionally well preserved, reveals interiors divided into functional spaces: a fire room (kitchen-common room), a bedroom, and areas dedicated to livestock or storage. The lintel of the entrance door bears the date of 1773, attesting to its late construction for this type of building. The rehabilitation of the 1990s helped to safeguard this vernacular heritage, threatened with disappearance in the twentieth century.

The museum also addresses the role of local communities in the development of the marshes, where extensive agriculture and livestock farming coexisted with ancestral hydraulic techniques. The farmhouse, typical of herbarium farms (orientated towards breeding), illustrates a transition to more specialized models in the 19th century, before their decline in the 20th century.

Located at 3 rue A Chardin (place called the Marais Foulon), the House of Marshes is part of a wider heritage network, including the Regional Natural Park and the list of historic monuments of the Channel. Its current management combines architectural preservation and cultural mediation, through exhibitions on traditional know-how and the marsh ecosystem.

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