Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The house at 34 Rue de Nantes in La Guerche-de-Bretagne is a typical example of 16th century Breton civil architecture. It is distinguished by its wooden porch, supported by three posts decorated with smooth mouldings and ECUs, resting on granite dice. This porch, with a depth of about 1m80, has chamfered spacers and carpenter marks visible on all parts, attesting to a homogeneous assembly. An orphan mortise under the window lintel suggests that a central post, now extinct, once divided the opening into two small adjacent windows. The wooden strip, of a "grid" type, with its regularly spaced vertical poles, would have been redone in the 17th or 18th centuries, as indicated by the crosses of Saint Andrew marked under the light.

The structure combines quartz microdiorite bellows for walls and a coated ground floor, while the floor, in wooden strips, is pierced by a gable window. Ground consoles, forming corbellation, finish the poles. This house, classified as Historic Monument by decree of 5 April 1948 (facade, roof and stumps of protected chimneys), is the last representative of a similar ensemble that once existed in Nantes Street. Its porch, characteristic of the Breton urban buildings of the Renaissance, illustrates the adaptation of medieval techniques to the residential needs of the period.

Architectural observations reveal an evolution over time: the use of materials and structural changes (such as the replacement of a post or low-ends) show continuous occupancy and successive maintenance. The carpenters' marks, systematically affixed, suggest a rigorous organization of work, possibly linked to a local corporation. The house thus embodies both the permanence of traditional know-how and the progressive transformations of the urban structure in Brittany between the 16th and 18th centuries.

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