Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Acadian houses of Archigny are farmhouses built in a balge (unoffered land) by Acadians deported after 1755. The latter, who arrived in France after the loss of Acadia (1713), were integrated into clearing projects. In Châtellerault, as early as 1773, they built these houses using flint moellons for foundations and local wood for frames. Three typical models existed: one or two fire rooms, with barn and attic under the same roof, or separate outbuildings.

House number 1, dated 1773, is the oldest. Houses 9 and 10 (the latter transformed into a museum of Acadia) illustrate this unique heritage. Their utility architecture reflects the agricultural needs: forage skylights, human roofs and livestock. These houses, located at the so-called "La Chaussée" and "The Eight Houses", were classified as Historical Monuments in 2000 for their testimonial value.

The deportation of the Acadians (1755), called Grand Dérangement, dispersed thousands of French settlers to metropolitan France. In Archigny, their installation marked the landscape by these rustic buildings, today communal or private property. Their preservation makes it possible to understand the adaptation of these exiles to the rural conditions of the Poitou in the eighteenth century.

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