Aigrefeuille-d'Aunis

Aigrefeuille d'Aunis is a commune in the Charente Maritime department in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region of south western France. By population as well as by economic weight, it is one of the three main urban centres of the Pays d'Aunis along with Surgères and Marans. The commune has been awarded one flower by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom.

The commune of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis is traversed south of the metropolitan area by the Highway D939 which connects La Rochelle to Périgueux, via Surgères and Angoulême. The commune is connected to Rochefort by the main road D5 which follows the old railway line (closed in 1953). Aigrefeuille d'Aunis is traversed in the south of the urban area by the Poitiers La Rochelle railway line. It is double tracked and was electrified in 1993 to allow passage of the TGV to La Rochelle Station.

The commune of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis officially became an Urban Commune after the population census of 1982. This classification criterion was established by INSEE from the fact that the town has gradually spread to several areas, localities, and villages which in the 19th century were clearly separated from the main town. Thus, in his communal notice that he issued for Aigrefeuille, M. A. Gautier informed his contemporaries that the commune had ten villages and eight hamlets, besides the town, a situation that stood in 1839. Today, around Aigrefeuille the villages of La Taillee, and Bois Gaillard are clustered on the right bank of the Virson stream. On the left bank in the south west is the large village of La Fragnée and on the right bank is the village of Le Pere. In the south, the village Le Grand Chemin establishes a connection between the urban residential area of Aigrefeuille, the industrial area of Fief Girard, and the station district along the Avenue d'Aunis, itself extended by the Grand Chemin. In the Southeast of the conurbation and separated by the small rustic wooded valley of Virson, the residential areas have spread around the ancient village of L'Angle and have merged with the villages of Bois Gaillard and La Taillée. To the northeast of Aigrefeuille is the village of Frace, which gave its name to the lake, gradually submerged by two major urban housing estates (Le Hameau du Lac and Le Fief des Dames). Away from the central urban area, in the south east, is another large village called La Planterie. The latter is located between Puydrouard, a large village in the neighbouring commune of Forges, and the conurbation of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis. At the northern edge of the commune and straddling the commune boundary, there is a small area called Panonnière. It is located on a small hill facing the small neighbouring commune of Virson. Just west of the commune and adjacent to Croix Chapeau, is the former NATO military hospital complex of which was closed in 1967 and since has been transformed into a business area: the Grands Champs zone, which extends over 56 hectares. while in the small depression which corresponds to the upstream part of the valley of Virson, are deposits from the Quaternary period. These are sedimentary deposits of fluvio marine origin from the Flandrian transgression which were covered by further formations, specifically peat, due to congestion and stagnation of watercourses. There are many peat bogs east of the communal territory extending into the neighbouring commune of Forges. All of the commune is located in a flat area, with wide horizons, yielding a landscape based on the open field system characteristic of farming in Europe. Aigrefeuille d'Aunis is located in the heart of the cereal plain of Aunis, which is reminiscent of Beauce. The commune is still quite wooded in parts – e. g. the leisure site at Lake Frace, the wooded banks of the Virson stream between the villages of La Fragnée and Le Pere, and the tourist site of La Taillée.

The original village was called Agrifolio "medieval", demonstrating a forestry origin, whose traces in toponymy can be found elsewhere in many localities of the commune: Frace, La Fragnée, La Taillée, Le Bois Gaillard, Le Bois de la Touche, Le Quéreux Fresne. The modern name of the city is derived from a logical linguistic evolution of the Latin acrifolium meaning "Holly". Actually the first houses of the original hamlet were built near a wood where there was abundant holly. This forestry origin of the village also recalls that the old parish belonged to the ancient Forest of Argenson. The Forest of Benon is a modern vestige of this forest. In another indication, the name of the city originates from acid grass that are found in abundance on the peat land of the commune: "The ebb of the ocean allowed these plants to spread on the water. The decomposition of organic materials then formed a thick layer of peat on which grew a sour acid grass, and thorny leafed trees, hence the name of Aigrefeuille".

Although in Gallo Roman times, a Roman road ran to the south of Aigrefeuille, no evidence of human occupation of this time was noted there. It was not until the period of the High Middle Ages that the first traces can be found. This Roman road was called "Le Grand Chemin" (The Great Way) and is well documented in the Table of Peutinger and archaeological excavations connected Angériacum to the current Saint Jean d'Angely, which is the presumed site of the Port du Plomb at L'Houmeau via Muron and Le Thou. Thus, the earliest known traces of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis are from the early medieval period, i. e. the 12th century: almost the same time as that of La Rochelle, following the fall of Châtelaillon in 1130. Aigrefeuille d'Aunis is a medieval creation, following the period of the great forest clearing of the Middle Ages. The region of Aunis, being heavily wooded, was cleared very late, from only the 11th to the 12th centuries and this was a measure of the population increase and the prosperity of the vineyards. A witness to this evolution was the Saint Étienne church, which was built in the middle of the 12th century in the heart of the original village but rebuilt several times in the Middle Ages, particularly in 1360 and especially the 15th century, when it was restored and strengthened after the Hundred Years' War. In the Middle Ages, Aigrefeuille d'Aunis was at the centre of a large clearing in the forest. The ancient Forest of Argenson, which separated the old provinces of Aunis and Poitou, was gradually reduced and extensive clearings were carried out mainly for vineyards which, at Aigrefeuille, were at the southern limit of the plain of Aunis. At the turn of the 13th century, Aigrefeuille became a lordship that had already acquired a certain importance in Aunis, and the lord, Guillaume Maingot, was sire of Surgères. He was also the first known lord of Aigrefeuille. Aigrefeuille was then a "considerable parish of Aunis and one of the oldest Châtelains of the barony of Surgères with the right of "chasteau" and a fortress with high, medium, and low jurisdiction, honorific rights and the first bench in the church". This growth came from the mutation of the vineyards of Aunis, which had operated since the 16th century, to the production of brandy: "The slump of Aunis wine caused by strong competition from Bordeaux wine gave rise to the first distillations, learned from the Dutch. The Netherlands and the Baltic countries were the first lasting buyers of "vin brûlé" ("Mulled wine" or Brandewijn in Dutch) from Aunis. If vineyard production was important, it grew most often at the expense of other products: "The land around maritime activities stimulate production, supported by capital from a well off society (from the bourgeoisie of La Rochelle) that marks the landscape footprint of these speculative activities. These speculative activities develop around the vine which, at the pace of growth of the trade in spirits, born during the 16th century, settled on all suitable land to accommodate it, sometimes to the detriment of other food producing areas". At the dawn of the French Revolution, Aigrefeuille was a large rural parish, with more than a thousand inhabitants. In 1793, its population was 1,290 inhabitants. However, it was not accepted by the Constituent Assembly in 1790 to be designated as the capital of the Canton, which was Ciré until 1801.

The town of Aigrefeuille became the capital of the canton at the beginning of the 19th century, following the redistribution of the administrative map of the region in 1800. This administrative function was withdrawn from Ciré and from Benon. These two cantons were united in 1801 into one canton with the boundaries redefined. The geographical criterion was little influence on the choice of Aigrefeuille as capital, since the town is not the centre of the canton. It was both because of its demographic weight and diversity of economic activities that the town was designated to be the new capital of a district then comprising fourteen communes. This new role put the tribunal of the justice of peace in the town, and the former constabulary building became a Police Station again as in the Napoleonic era. At the end of the First Empire, the wealth of Aigrefeuille was based primarily on agriculture. The expansion of the vineyards was so great that it became a true monoculture until the crisis of phylloxera, which reached the vineyards of Aunis in 1876. The wine brought great prosperity to the commune and the countryside of Aunis. If the town became a major centre of wine production in the first half of the 19th century, it was also a centre of small rural industries, with four windmills, two textile factories, a lime kiln, and the important mining of a peat bog which employed a large number of labourers. Peat Bogs in the commune were used particularly to supply several cognac distilleries in Aigrefeuille as wood, which was usually used in the "roasters", had become a rare commodity in Aunis. Three rail lines traversed Aunis through Aigrefeuille: "Under the metal canopy Aigrefeuille station reigned a great deal of activity because it is the junction of the La Rochelle and Rochefort lines to Paris and the La Rochelle – Rochefort line; Nearby, a small locomotive depot meets the motive power needs". This function of a junction and railway depot was completed by the installation of a gas plant and a gasometer followed by a water tower. The station at Aigrefeuille was particularly busy and important. It had three waiting rooms, a buffet, and even a library. It quickly became a new place of entertainment for the commune. but the commune recorded in the next census a notable decline in population. Nevertheless, Aigrefeuille was still the first commune in its canton and was one of the largest rural communes of Aunis at the beginning of the Third Republic. Despite a relatively stable population, a new urban fabric began to develop, especially around the new station area. From its medieval origins to the Second Empire, village life was organized primarily around the church and the adjoining square, the current Place de la Republique. The installation of a religious boarding school in 1857, which was one of the first buildings to be built in the second half of the 19th century in Aigrefeuille, paved the way for urban planning work which also continued during the Third Republic. During the Second Empire, the centre of the village began to change. A new square, surrounded by chestnut trees, was set up to accommodate a showground for livestock, and this business made Aigrefeuille one of the largest markets in Aunis. The commune had 1,648 inhabitants at that time and remained by far the largest town in the canton although its population had been in decline for more than a decade. The crisis of phylloxera came in 1875 in the Saintonge vineyards, and the following year reached Aunis. This led to profound economic changes on the plain of Aunis where the vineyards were gradually abandoned. They were replaced by forage crops for dairy farming. In Aunis, this new agricultural activity grew rapidly thanks to the powerful dairy cooperative movement begun in 1888 in Chaillé in the Commune of Saint Georges du Bois which then spread to Saintonge and Poitou before the 20th century. Together with dairy farming, cereal cropping also grew for which the cultivable land of the plain of Aunis is particularly well suited. Sugar beet, another crop which was very new for the region prospered in the late 19th century in Aunis, and especially in the Canton of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis. Thus the city was able to successfully convert its viticulture economy by developing an agro food industry with the cooperative dairy and the industrial distillery of sugar beet, while maintaining its cognac distillery, has acquired a high profile in the region. According to demographic data from INSEE, the population peak came in 1876 with 1,881 inhabitants. It marked the maximum population of the commune in the 19th century that was not exceeded until 1968, nearly a century later.

At the beginning of the 20th century until after the Second World War, Aigrefeuille d'Aunis went into a long period of decline, resulting in the stagnation of economic activities and an almost continuous decline in population. Aigrefeuille d'Aunis could not maintain its position as a railway junction. In October 1933, passenger and cargo traffic were finally stopped between Rochefort and Aigrefeuille d'Aunis. The activities of the locomotive depot gradually reduced and then the depot was dismantled. The station could still accommodate passenger traffic on the railway line from Paris La Rochelle, but it lost much of its importance, while the NR139 highway was moved further south, diverting transit traffic outside the town. Aigrefeuille thus lost the opportunity to develop a real rail and road intersection. In addition, the diversification of industrial activities stopped in the commune. The abandonment of the beet sugar industry brought about the end of the distillery at the end of the 1930s. Economic Sector No. of Employees Percentage Primary Sector 0.9% Industrial Sector 24.9% Construction 7.3% Trade, Transport & Services 37.1% Administrations, Education, Health 29.7% Total Employed 100%

As shown in the above table, industrial employment is important in Aigrefeuille d'Aunis which can be called an "industrial centre" although the tertiary sector (trade, services, government, health and education) takes up the majority of jobs in the city with 66.8% in 2017. The proportion of tertiary industry is lower than other cities in most departments because of their lower levels of industrialisation. Socio professional categories Aigrefeuille d'Aunis 2017 but faced increasing competition and European restrictions on the PAC dairy quotas in France. The dairy factory was completely rebuilt and modernised in 1958

While the city is not home to large factories nevertheless industrial zones have been established. There is an industrial area of 56 hectares of land and 90,000 m2 of buildings containing thirty five establishments and twenty depots. The Handling and Transit Company (SETT) from La Rochelle occupies a warehouse of 22,500 m2 where it stocks barley and wheat". Since the early 1970s, a new industrial area of 35 hectares has been established in the south of the town near the railway line. There are businesses specializing in: recreational boating industry, wood processing, metalworking, plastics, concrete products.

Aigrefeuille Aunis houses the headquarters of the world leading manufacturer of cruising catamarans: Fountaine Pajot. Fountaine Pajot has been established since 1976 in the Fief Girard industrial zone and is now the largest employer in town with about 250 staff. Since 1983 the company has delivered 1,668 catamarans of 21 different models".

Aigrefeuille d'Aunis has had an agricultural market to serve the Aunis plain since the Middle Ages when the town had a covered market with fairs and open markets. Today it has a weekly agricultural market and monthly fairs. Aigrefeuille d'Aunis has become a major transit centre for grain with large grain silos located in the area of the old railway station. The agricultural cooperative MCA specialises in grain storage and the trading of seeds, as well as providing food for livestock. It is one of the largest employers in the city with more than fifty jobs. This grain trading company took over the premises of the former sugar beet cooperative distillery in 1960 then expanded and modernized the premises.

Since 1801, when the Consulate was established by Napoleon I, the commune of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis became the chief town of a canton which now has 11 towns and 12,866 inhabitants (in 2007). It is part of the Arrondissement of Rochefort.

Aigrefeuille d'Aunis joined the Community of Communes of Plaine d'Aunis in October 2001. The commune hosts the administrative headquarters of the community which manages 17 communes. This intercommunal structure is also part of the Pays d'Aunis whose headquarters are at Courçon. The Community of Communes of Plaine d'Aunis is the most populous part of the Pays d'Aunis.

Since the electoral redistricting of November 1986 (under the Pasqua law), the city of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis and its canton belong to the Second Legislative District of Charente Maritime, also called the Rochefort Riding of Pays d'Aunis. Since 17 June 2012, the deputy has been Suzanne Tallard, who is also mayor of Aytré and who succeeded Jean Louis Leonard.

The city has a police station located on Avenue des Marronniers, in a new, more functional building abandoning the old building built in 1875. Its radius of action covers the entire Canton of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis. The Aigrefeuille d'Aunis police unit works together with that of Surgères where two units of the police force coordinate their efforts within the Community brigades of Surgères and Aigrefeuille, known under the acronym "COB Surgères / aigrefeuille". This unit operates in two cantons together with over 28,000 inhabitants and covers 23 communes. COB Surgères / Aigrefeuille is empowered to conduct anti crime operations (ADO) with stop and search for people and vehicles, occasionally assisted by additional anti narcotic units (air support helicopter, dog and patrols from the Psig of Rochefort). The city opened a new police barracks on 20 May 2011 where it has renovated offices and new housing to accommodate 11 policemen and their families.

In 2007, Aigrefeuille d'Aunis was the 19th largest urban unit of the Charente Maritime. This small town has undergone profound changes in the urban landscape since the end of World War II and continues to evolve even though it still retains a certain cachet of a large rural village. At the end of the Second World War, Aigrefeuille d'Aunis was still a small rural town and the town was in a rebuilding phase, having been heavily bombed during military assaults in the La Rochelle pocket to clear the region of the occupiers. Its population then dropped to its lowest level ever recorded in the town (1,278) in 1946. The village centre lost a large number of traces of the past, only a few old houses – like the old confessional boarding school, the former police station, and the Town Hotel – have been saved and the church dominates the city with its high tower. The strong rural and village character inherited from the prewar Aigrefeuille d'Aunis has been gradually reduced and the commune displays a more marked urban character, including the development of residential areas and renovation of the urban habitat. It is from the 1970s and especially during the decade of the 1980s, that the commune has initiated a voluntary program of urbanization by acquiring many subdivisions of houses grouped under the generic term of fief or suburb. It is in this period that the city has grown the most and suffered the most changes, gaining more than a thousand people between 1968 and 1982. These new developments now surround the centre of the city and extend along the main access routes to the city centre. The construction of suburbs and cooperative subdivisions, begun in the sixties and seventies, helped to seal the fate of the old villages and the town, including the former villages of La Fragnée, to the west, and L'Angle to the east. Then, in the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the old village of Péré was integrated into the city by the establishment of new residential areas, while industrial areas spread south of the city, along the lines of road and rail communication, especially around the area of the station. The old village of Grand Chemin has grown as a residential area and connects the urban residential area of Aigrefeuille and the industrial area of Fief Girard. To the north east towards the new tourist attraction of the city near Lake Frace and to the village of Virson extends a residential area of more dense housing (Fief des Dames, Hameau du Lac). It is to the east of the city that urbanization is accentuated with the old wooded village of La Taillée, transformed early on into a site of recreation and tourism. This part of the city is growing towards the large village of La Planterie that in the early 1960s, was a modest hamlet barely reported on maps. Some modern building of private residences has taken place in the residential park to the west and north of the city centre to complete this controlled urbanization.

The nearest airport is the La Rochelle Ile de Ré airport. It is located 30 kilometres west of the commune. It is the largest airport in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region by passenger traffic (more than 220,000 passengers per year) and the largest in the Loire Valley and Gironde.

The town has two surgeries, one of which is located in the city centre. This medical centre houses four GPs while in the outskirts of the city centre is a second surgery. The centre also has two dental practices. Aigrefeuille d'Aunis does not have a radiology or MRI centre. The nearest is at Surgères. The nearest hospital is located in Rochefort less than twenty kilometres south of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis, however the Central Hospital of La Rochelle which is more than twenty kilometres to the west offers a very wide range of treatments as it is the largest hospital in the department of Charente Maritime.

The city has a nursing home with four therapists, two speech therapists, and a podiatrist. On the outskirts of the city centre, are several nursing and physiotherapy practices. Aigefeuille d'Aunis has two pharmacies, both located in the city centre, and an optician. There is also a dental prosthesis laboratory. The city does not have a medical laboratory, the nearest being located at Surgères. An ambulance service is located on the outskirts of the town centre. It is supported by firefighters occasionally needed to intervene in an emergency situation. There is also a rescue centre, which depends on the SDIS of Charente Maritime. has opened a branch in the city.

More than 1,050 students attend schools and colleges located in Aigrefeuille d'Aunis. This is one of the largest colleges in the Charente Maritime by enrollment with 715 students

The college catchment area covers the eleven communes in the canton of Aigrefeuille d'Aunis and falls within the district of Rochefort for the academic Inspection Department. The College of the Holy Sacrament is a private college with recruitment going beyond the limits of the canton of Aigefeuille d'Aunis. It was a boarding school until the 1990s which then was replaced by a network of host families. The old chapel was renovated in 1991 and offers a beautiful room for conferences and the college choir. This private school is one of ten private schools in the department of Charente Maritime. Since 2010, a new sports complex on the road to Saint Christophe northwest of the city centre has been opened. It covers 45,000 sq. m including a reception area, a training ground, a games area, a playground for children, stands, and changing rooms.

Aigrefeuille d'Aunis belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of La Rochelle and Saintes and the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Poitiers (Prior to 2002 in the Archdiocese of Bordeaux). The Aigrefeuille d'Aunis catholic church provides religious services. Digital broadcasting from this transmitter was activated in October 2006 in order to overcome the deficiencies of the transmitter at Niort Maisonneuve (signal distortion was reported in some areas of the Charente Maritime). All national channels are broadcast, including the regional version of France 3, France 3 Poitou Charentes, and its local station: France 3 Atlantique.