Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste

English translation

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History

Related to a family of buildings characterized by powerful octagonal bell towers erected around 1500, the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste of Bourdalat is a building of medieval origin. Probably built in the 14th century, it originally must have consisted of a single nave with a flat chevet. Major restorations undertaken after the Wars of Religion led in particular to the reconstruction of the chevet on a semicircular plan. The Revolution did not spare the building nor its interior decoration which was dispersed and partially destroyed. The few recovered remnants of the choir furnishings were completed and reassembled in several stages during the 19th century. The church is composed of a nave terminated by a semicircular apse, a south aisle comprising a font chapel at the western extremity and a chapel dedicated to the Virgin to the East, heightened and almost entirely rebuilt in 1694. In the extension of the aisle a sacristy was attached to the choir. On the western facade the porch tower is incorporated at its base in a timber-framed porch of the 19th century. The church is built of heterogeneous masonry, the 16th century porch tower by contrast is built in fine regular coursed shell limestone. In the interior, the church presents a simple structure. Nave and aisle comprise three bays beyond a space containing an entrance drum supporting a gallery and the font chapel; they communicate by three large round arches and are lit by large symmetrical openings renewed or created in the 19th century; the plaster vaults on lath are barrel vaults depressed, with slightly flatter arch on the aisle. In the exact extension of the nave the choir covered with a flattened cul de four is distinguished only by its stepped base with communion table and by its decoration. Similarly the chapel of the Virgin is distinguished from the aisle only by its stepped base and its closing grilles. The 16th century stone porch tower is the most interesting architectural element. Square in plan at the base and buttressed by solid buttresses at the angles, this tower presents an octagonal plan from the first floor, brick squinches allowing the transition from square to octagon. On the ground floor the porch which opens under a large pointed arch is covered with a rib vault in brick (webs and ribs) with star motif at the key and uncarved corbels receiving the spring of the arches. The floors, accessible by the interior gallery, are delimited by bands and lit by simple openings able to serve a defensive function and which become true windows in the upper part.