Usines de porcelaine Gaucher et Vincent-Blin

English translation

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History

Originally, the Gaucher factory (on which the globe kilns are situated) was a glassworks built in 1860 for Félix Richer. It was transformed in 1881 into a porcelain manufactory with three kilns. This factory was managed by a partnership: Besnard, Lachaise and Co. In 1882, it employed 180 people. It took the name B.L. and Charonnat in 1900. It was ceded in 1919 to a family of bankers, the Gaucher, who operated it until 1959. The Gaucher factory covered an area of 2700 m². It comprises a set of three round globe kilns, with intermittent firing with reversed flame, operating on coal, which probably date from the period of transformation of the factory into a porcelainerie. One of the kilns is destroyed. They are installed under an iron roof structure exceptional for its antiquity. The system, which must date from the 1840-1850s at the latest, (according to F. Hamon, specialist in industrial heritage) was designed and manufactured on site. Is this the roof structure of the glassworks? This site is representative of an important activity in the Vierzon industry: the manufacture of porcelain. It is also very characteristic of the location of industrial sites in the town in the 19th century, enclosed in the urban fabric, situated between the railway station and the canal. It is moreover very close to another porcelain factory, the Blin factory, where a kiln of the same type adapted to operate on gas is preserved. These globe kilns are of great interest as they are representative of a technical system used over a long period, until the end of the 1950s, but of which few examples remain. The presence on a single site of globe kilns operating on coal and a kiln operating on gas makes it possible to show the evolution of production methods. The dilapidated buildings of the Gaucher factory were subject to demolition permits in 1991 and on 21 April 1998. From an urban planning point of view, the two porcelain factories Gaucher and Blin formed with the buildings of the Société Française a particularly substantial industrial complex. The town of Vierzon, the owner, wishes to rehabilitate the site of the porcelain factories of the Croix Blanche. It has had the dilapidated buildings of the two Blin and Gaucher factories demolished to preserve only the buildings housing the kilns and the kilns themselves. It wishes to carry out a landscaping arrangement of the site and for this purpose has requested European funding.