Lique Ser

5 points of interest

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  History

  The age of silk

  From the 19th century onwards, the silk industry developed in the Cévennes: tanneries gave way to spinning mills. The mills used water not only to treat the silkworm cocoons (which were boiled to prepare the silk) but also for the steam-driven spinning machines. In the second half of the 19th century, diseases strongly reduced silk production, which was also subject to competition from foreign silks and then from artificial silk. The silk industry went under in 1965.

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  History

  The tanners’ district

  La Calquière district gets its name from that of the ditches in which the tanners soaked their animal skins with limestone, which is called cauç or calç in Occitan. All along the Gardon there were tanneries because its acidic water was good for rinsing the skins, which was indispensable for obtaining high quality products.

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  Architecture

  The Château de Nogaret

  Built in the 11th century, the Château de Nogaret stood on the only road linking Saint-André de Valborgne with Le Pompidou. It is believed to have been constructed to serve as a stronghold and to defend the Vallée Borgne. It was set alight in 1628 during the war between the Duke of Rohan and Louis XIII, and again in 1704 by the Camisards, before being rebuilt in the 18th century. This private property still belongs to the Manoel de Nogaret family.
  “This small château is one of the finest examples of the fortified manor houses built towards the end of the Middle Ages by minor local lords wanting to free themselves, at least symbolically, from domination by their feudal overlords.” (Isabelle Darnas - Les châteaux médiévaux en Cévennes).

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  History

  Lique Ser

  Lique Ser path goes up to the famous Corniche des Cévennes, a ridge between the two departments of Gard and Lozère. This road, which is busy these days in summer because of its superb views, has not always been a holiday address.
  In the days of Louis XIII and XIV, this was the route of the dragonnades and the repression of Protestantism by the King’s army after the Revocation of the Edict (the billeting of deliberately ill-disciplined soldiers in Protestant households) of Nantes. This ridge gave the soldiers, known as the King’s dragoons, strategic viewpoints. The road was abandoned from the 19th century onwards. In 1930, after lengthy renovations, it was opened to traffic again, becoming a major tourist route

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  Architecture

  A grapevine ravine in schist country

  Schist (slate) is omnipresent all around you. Dark, with silvery reflections and a reddish oxidation due to naturally occurring iron, schist is the local building material par excellence. It is the perfect material for covering roofs. It can be turned into solid cobblestoned tracks called calades, where the stones are arranged tightly against each other on-edge. The dry-stone walls that you can see almost everywhere are also built from schist. These walls have largely withstood the test of time, though less so over the past decades because of a lack of maintenance. In the old days, they were regularly repaired, since they retained the terraced cropland for subsistence crops, including the indispensable sweet chestnut trees and, here, grapevines.