La Grosse Forge

English translation

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History

The Grosse forge of Charenton, 11 kilometres east of Saint-Amand-Montrond, is one of the five sites that made up the metallurgical establishment of Meillant-Charenton, probably founded around 1590-1600. Three refineries, the Grosse forge, attested in 1635, the forge of Renouard, created between 1657 and 1661 and later called the Petite forge, at Charenton, and the forge of Boutillon, founded between 1764 and 1774, at Saint-Pierre-les-Etieux, transformed into iron the cast iron from the furnaces of Meillant and Champange. It was, after Clavières, in the Indre, founded by the Prince de Condé in 1660, the largest metallurgical establishment in Berry. Modernized during the second half of the 18th century by the duc de Béthune-Charost, an enlightened spirit and physiocrat, the enterprise reached its peak during the first half of the 19th century. The duc de Mortemart leased his forges to industrialists such as Jean-Baptiste Déchanet, who, in 1845, brought Meillant into the large company of Châtillon-Commentry. The forges of Meillant ceased to operate in 1885. Those of Charenton had stopped as early as 1845. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Grosse forge of Charenton comprised a forge and a slitting mill. From 1815 to 1825 were constructed a long stable, the largest of this type known in Berry, a forge master's house (built in 1824) whose architecture is representative of rural dwellings of south Boischaut at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, and a bar of worker housing in a U shape, an original and fairly well preserved witness to the habitat of the first industrial revolution. The workshops, consisting of a refinery and a slitting mill, are situated at the edge of the former pond. Of the refinery, only two covered channel ways remain under the causeway. The slitting mill, probably rebuilt in the period 1830-1840, is the only one among the fifty or so that existed in the Centre region to have preserved significant remains of its hydraulic system, in particular its two masonry channel ways, partially vaulted. Nothing remains of the blast furnace of the town of Meillant. That of Champange, very well preserved, testifies to the technical and architectural evolution of iron metallurgy in the second half of the 18th century. At the Petite forge of Charenton, a large mill replaced the forge. Of the forge of Boutillon, only greatly altered worker housing remains.