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6 Church Saint Germain and its haloed crossesA curiosityThe church is placed under the protection of Saint Germain, who came from England in the V century to evangelise the country (a relic of this saint remains within the church). It was consecrated on Christmas Day 1670. Built in granite by the inhabitants of the Commune, it has several peculiarities : a little vaulted chapel, a square-form bell tower, wooden statues of the XVII and XVIII centuries, baptismal fonts of the XIII century, a paved fl oor made of haloed-cross tombstones taken from the ancient ceme-tery of Diélette, and stained-glass windows illustrating the legend of Saint Germain.

7 Mines and QuarriesJourney under the SeaThe under-sea iron mine was situated at Diélette. It was one of the most renowned mines in France. It was exploited industrially from 1870 to 1962 from two 150-metre deep shafts. The mine was regularly protected against infi ltration. The Cape of Flamanville contained also

numerous granite quarries. This granite was used to construct the harbour of Cherbourg, to restore the church of St. Germain in Flamanville, to pave the Place de la Concorde in Paris, for the needle of the obelisk in

Cherbourg Town Hall square, etc. Three centuries of wealth thanks to granite and iron.

Nature and heritage,follow the guide

FOCUS ON FLAMANVILLE

Nature and heritage,www.fl amanville.fr Flamanville Town Hall 02 33 87 66 66Offi ce de Tourisme de la Hague 02 33 52 74 94

1 Castle history at every step

Flamanville possesses a castle built by Hervé Basan between 1655 and 1658 on the ruins of a manor. The façade is in grey granite extracted from the

neighbouring cliffs. In the XVI century the castle had central heating, an ice-box and a bath, very modern equipment for the time.

The lords of FlamanvilleCommoners in the XIV century, the Basans became an important family in Normandy. Colin I reached the rank of squire, in 1375 married a ward of the King of Navarre, Jeanne of Gatteville, and adopted his wife’s coat of arms. He was titled in 1391.Dispossessed and hunted by the English during the Hundred Years War, the family only recovered their estate at the end of the confl ict, with a few extra strongholds. Their faithfulness to the French sovereign enabled the Basans to become illustrious on the battlefi eld. Guillaume Basan was made Baron by Louis XIII in August 1610. In 1652 his eldest son, Hervé Basan, married Agnès Mole, granddaughter of the Minister of Justice.

By offi cial letters of Louis XIV the baron was elevated to marquess in March 1654, and so the castle was built. In the XVIII century his grandson Jean-Jacques Basan created the lateral wings, including the Orangery.The last of the Basans, Elizabeth, married Jean-Joseph Lecomte de Nonant, Marquess of Raray, in 1747 and was the mother of the “Knight of Flamanville”. The latter died at the age of 27 in 1779 and the domain passed to his aunt, Madame de Bruc, who bequeathed it to one of her relatives, the Marquess of Sesmaisons in 1820.

The Sesmaisons sold the castle in 1888 to Charles Milcent. Milcent’s son-in-law, André Rostand, Mayor of Flamanville and Conseiller Géné-ral, was the outstanding fi gure of the castle in the XX century. Since 1986 the castle, named in the supplementary inventory of the Monu-ments Historiques, has belonged to the Commune of Flamanville

2 Park, garden and woods Open to visitors all the year roundThe park is marked out in the centre of an enclosure of about twenty hectares, its major ornament being the use of water to “give light”, with the creation of three lakes, set on different levels. One of these has the signifi cant name of “canal”, inspired by Fontainebleau or Versailles. In the XIX century the Count of Sesmaisons initiated the creation of the vast vegetable garden which stretches out on the south side of the castle. In the woods there is a rare feature : the ice-box. This was a well hidden under the brambles on the banks of the great lake. This place, dug out in dry ground, made it possible to pack ice and snow during the winter to be used in summer.

3 Jean-Jacques TowerSituated on the edge of the park and opposite the church, this octagonal pavilion was built at the end of the XVII century. Its name comes from a legend that the famous philosopher Jean-Jac-ques Rousseau was a guest of the knight of Flamanville. This tower has a beautiful vaulted hall whose balcony opens onto the picturesque countryside of la Hague.

4 SemaphoreA magnifi cent viewing pointThe Semaphore was built in 1807 on the Cape of Flamanville. Its advanced position in the sea offers a good look-out point over the coast. A semi-circular room possessed an 18-metre-high mast which functioned witch a system of pulleys, arms and wings ca-pable of taking up seven different positions and composing 343 si-gnals. It was originally conceived for the Navy, which kept watch on maritime traffi c by communicating with boats at a distance. In the mid-XIX century electric telegraphy was coupled to the mast. In 1923 a public telephone station was opened. Then, in 1928, the mast disappeared and was replaced by aerials which were in operation until the CROSS of Jobourg came into ser-vice in the early 1970s, marking the end of surveillance activities in Flamanville. Sold by the Navy to the Commune of Flamanville in 1984, the Semaphore was transfor-med, three years later, into a res-taurant and stopover gite.

5 Dolmen : la Pierre au Rey Unusual and MysteriousThis pile of rocks, called the Neolithic site of Castel Dolmen, Pierre au Rey or the Tripod, is situated near the Semaphore and catches the eye of the curious. This very enigmatic, megalithic group is made up of an enormous block of stone weighing more than 10 tons on top of three other rocks, followed by a line of half-buried stones. Was this a cultural site of our ancestors the Gauls?

Or maybe a vestige of Merovingian cemeteries, or perhaps simply a natural pile of stones?