Plassard, Encrevier, Bodet, Barbin, Chaussac… in Saint-Laurent-sur-S\u00e8vre, there’s a watermill every 300 metres !<\/p>\n
Most of them were built in the 14th century, and only the Moulin de la Sagesse dates from the 19th. Construction of these many water-powered mills helped the town of Saint-Laurent grow very quickly…<\/p>\n
Its distance from major cities no longer hindered its growth. Fullers, dyers, weavers, carders, rag pickers -rags used for paper making- and other fabric merchants understood only too well that with all these mills, work would not be hard to come by in Saint-Laurent !<\/p>\n
By the 19th century, the local economy was booming.<\/p>\n
Weavers and spinners packed the town.<\/p>\n
Muleteers came and went, their animals loaded down with bales of fabric or reams of paper.<\/p>\n
Carpenters and mill wheelwrights traveled from mill to mill to sort out mechanical problems.<\/p>\n
The industry of the S\u00e8vre Nantaise flourished.<\/p>\n
Some mills, like the Bodet Mill, continued in operation into the 20th century.<\/p>\n
Purchased in 1867, the mill was altered to become the Saint-Joseph laundry.<\/p>\n
It used all the traditional laundering processes of washing, rinsing, desizing, disentangling and open-air drying.<\/p>\n
This final stage of the operation produced a highly sought-after \u00ab\u00a0blued\u00a0\u00bb white fabric.<\/p>\n
Despite its undoubted quality, it was not without competition. So the Saint-Joseph laundry introduced more services: dyeing, texturizing, fabric stabilization, artificial ageing and other enhancement techniques.<\/p>\n
Tools and equipment were modernized: weaving became a mechanical process, and steam engines and tall boiler chimneys began to appear.<\/p>\n
Every resource was used to boost production, but the decline had already begun.<\/p>\n
The 1930s saw the end of the traditional laundering of white fabric, to be replaced by chemical (chlorine) bleaching.<\/p>\n
Then the garment making workshop closed, followed by the mechanical weaving looms.<\/p>\n
The factory was reopened on many occasions, but finally fell silent in 2007.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It marked the final end of the active life of the mills of Saint-Laurent-sur-S\u00e8vre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"