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Heritage classified

Origin and history

The Saint-Aurélien church of Mespaul, located in the Finistère, was originally a parish church built in the 15th and 16th centuries. Destroyed at the end of the 19th century, it was sold as a reserve of materials in 1908, leaving only its ossuary chapel, a rare vestige of original parish enclosures. This ossuary, dated from the 16th to 17th centuries boundary, illustrates the Renaissance style with its plan and architectural elements, such as the bays in the middle of the century supported by pilasters. It is compared to the church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Landerneau (1635), reflecting a regional constructive tradition.

The ossuary chapel, originally dedicated to funeral use, escaped the massive destructions of the 19th century that affected many similar buildings. Like many who survived, it was reconverted over time: sacristy, primary school, or even home. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been used as housing, while maintaining its facades and roofs protected by a 1997 decree. Its portal, partly dated from 177 (last illegible figure), and the mention of an old windowmaster of 1575 recall his religious and artistic past.

The building thus embodies the transformation of sacred spaces in Brittany, where parish enclosures, once centres of community and spiritual life, were often dismantled or reassigned. The Ossuary Chapel of Mespaul, although modified, remains a material testimony of the funeral and architectural practices of the Breton Renaissance, in a context marked by religious reforms and social developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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