The church Holy-Cross of Gannat

11 juin 2007

The church Holy-Cross of Gannat

The traces the oldest discoveries with Gannat go up to a few twenty-three million years. They take us along on the track of the brachypothères, in other words rhinoceroses of the end of the Oligocene one.
Gannat seems to have been a true cemetery for these animals, so that one discovers multitudes of fossilized bones.
The motorway building sites on the territory gannatois made it possible to discover several industries on quartz rollers which would make go up the settlement of the area around eight hundred and thousand years.

Less further in the past, Gannat is an ancient city at the septentrional end of the opulent plain of Limagne. Its inhabitants, who raised of the tribe of Avernes, took share with the fight of Vercingétorix against César. The City was located then at the site of the Saint-Etienne church. Pagan temple set up at this place, it remains remains of columns and the very beautiful statue of Sucellus God (visible with the Machelon Museum). From the year thousand, Gannat is transported to the current site of the city.

The church Holy-Cross of Gannat

The parish of Gannat depended on the old diocese of Clermont. Romance building remain both chapellles radiant, some elements of the bedside as well as the northern arms of the transept. The rehandlings will follow one another until the XVIIIème century.

In XIIIème century, the three spans of the nave and sides, preceded by a porch, were built. Of XIVème in XVIème century, ten vaults of irregular plans were coupled without order against the gouttereaux walls and the bedside. The nave and the sides consituent an interesting whole of the end of XIIIème century, in particular by the presence of a false triforium to the top of the sides.

The Gothic door “of Faulconnière”, located at the south, gives access to the vault rested by the Filhol family, from which the lords owner from the castle close to Gannat come. The blazon decorates the tympanum.

On the Romance part of the bedside, by fragments, a cord of palmettes is still seen which circumvented the clotheshangers of windows. One of the colones shouldering the apse is surmounted by a capital of the nativity.

The church only appears today on the bottom of the place. It always was not thus. Two thirds of this place were occupied by markets which one planned to dismount about 1830. A building advanced to the central gate sparing a narrow lane between the church and him, dominated by the waste-gas main known as Bade-throat which, the days of rain, poured water of roof on the imprudent passer by. Right before the north-western angle some parasitic constructions rested against the wall of the church. In the North-East, there was a cemetery which one débarassé oneself with the revolution. The Romance part can be dated from XIIème and XIIème centuries and the Gothic part of XIIIème in XVème century.

Bell-towers

The Western frontage, of XIIIème century, is bored of a gate whose tympanum is decorated of a trefoil arch, surmounted of a gable.
The two bell-towers make balance around the central gate between the gross tower in the south-west which contains the bells and what was a bell-tower before being levelled with the revolution. The starting points of the one and the other are similar, except that the south-western tower was altered, thickened, consolidated between 1659 and 1665. The current bell-tower, high of approximately 30m, contains the “Lead one”, bell which weighs 1.100 kg. It was high above the first span of the southern side at the XVIIIème century.

The Western gate

It is offered to the sight as soon as one puts the foot on the place. The toric curves of its archivolt were pressed on posts with the capitals decorated with hooks. In the throats which separate them are carved not easily readable reasons. The tympanum leaves apparaitre a head of painted Christ since disappeared, in June 1942, the plaster coating which carried the inscription “the French people reconnait to be to it suprème and the immortality of the heart”. In 1881 the large current doors replaced the antiques doors with mullions and panels. One does not know by which juggling act the two old ventails were found in London in Victoria and Albert museum.

Side doors

While passing to the south, the gate with its doors with box offers a particularly neat decoration. Two channels allowed the rain water run-off are finished by the head of a fantastic animal that some identified with the vouivre. These channels indicate the limit of the primitive construction deformed by the addition to various dates of the side chapels.

The Romance apse

The apsidal chapel in beautiful apparatus is turned towards the east. It is known as vault of Holy Procule, owner of Gannat and introduced in a stained glass. By circumventing it, one meets the northern absidiole which had its during in the south?. On one of the external capitals, birth known Christ. The northern door is treated with sobriety. The baptismal funds, were closed on the right in a wall cupboard with the painted doors.

The great nave and chorus

Supported against the large gate one appreciates the width of the building and the ribbed vaults by distionguant the 4 spans of the nave, the presbytery on the level of the transept, the chorus and the apsidal chapel.

The length of the building is of 43,50m and the width of 15m. Before chorus étaitr reserved with the priests communamists having 48 stalls, alas dismounted and laid out in the museum. The grids going up with the construction of the building closed it and were surmounted by a platform or jubé removed in 1790.

The déambulatoire

Privativement called carole, it continues the sides by making the turn of the chorus. It served 3 radiating chapels of which only one remained. Romance church, it remains to us the pillars extéreiurs passage surmounted by capitals with beautiful geometrical, floral or animal ornamentations, and some human characters appearing of the telamones, put aside the figurative capital representing the fall of Adam and Eve to the terrestrial paradise.