Église Sainte-Rictrude

English translation

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History

Since the Middle Ages, a parish church surrounded by a cemetery was located near the square, away from the Benedictine abbey. Its reconstruction was decided in 1779 and entrusted to the Lilois architect J.F.J. Lesaffre (1731-1803). After the transfer of the cemetery to outside the town, work began at the end of 1786; the gros-oeuvre was completed when, on 18 December 1790, the church tower collapsed onto the nave. After the Revolution, it was another Lilois architect, B.A. Dewarlez-Lepers (1768-1819), who was charged with reconstructing the vaults and the tower. The works were contracted in 1811 and completed in 1815. Dewarlez also designed the furnishings, of which only the stalls and the screen surmounting them remain. The interior arrangement and furnishings were completed or renewed throughout the 19th century. In 1864, the Tourcoing architect Charles Maillard (1821-1875) designed "the architectural decoration of the interior of the church", judged too bare: the vaults, the arches, the openings… were adorned with rich plaster decoration. In 1903, in a context of tensions between the Church and the State, the commune had the republican motto engraved on the pediment of the façade. Neoclassical trend.

Description

The materials come from the region: for the plinth, sandstone; as the main material, brick, the colour of which is enhanced by the white limestone used for the architectural decoration. The treatment of the façade, crowned by a tower, was privileged; austere, it can be read as a combination of geometric forms. One can see in it the influence of the Italian Palladian architecture of the 16th century. The church has no transept. Faithful to a regional tradition, the tall colonnade crowned by round arches leads the eye towards the chevet. This chevet is of circular plan, an infrequent form nevertheless used in the 18th century for the axial chapel of grand buildings (Saint-Roch in Paris in 1705, more locally the collegiate church Saint-Pierre in Douai around 1745). The lighting is provided by the side openings, which, originally, had neither decoration nor stained glass. The dominant impression is one of the amplitude of the volumes and the luminosity; one must imagine the church in 1815, at the end of its partial reconstruction, whitewashed, little furnished, without the decoration of mouldings added in 1864: a sober architecture, conforming to the neoclassical taste of the end of the 18th century.