Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
A vast urban redevelopment project was recently implemented in the city of Tours, in the Loire Valley, following the abandonment of a 20th-century military barracks in the heart of the city. Intriguingly, written sources indicated that this precise location was once home to an important Benedictine abbey of nuns, in operation for eight centuries and occupying an area of 6.5ha. Excavations at the site were carried out over almost a year and a half by around 30 archaeologists from Inrap and the Department, and came to an end in December 2023. Post-excavation work is now under way, but it is already possible to draw some conclusions about the evolution of this important place of contemplation.
Early activity
According to historical texts, the site was first occupied in around the 9th century by a village called Beaumont, located approximately 1km south-west of the later, medieval enclosure. We have very little information about this settlement, apart from references to a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, known as ‘Notre-Dame des Miracles’. Now, though, remains uncovered during the excavation (pits, ditches, and post-holes) confirm the existence of this early occupation. The discovery of a building measuring 23m by 9.5m, and composed of a nave and a choir with a flat apse, reveals that a place of worship was indeed present. No burials appear to have occurred inside this building, but a funerary area with around 600 burials was identified 50m to the east, as well as numerous other tombs on the immediate periphery of the chapel.
The second occupation of the premises corresponds to the establishment of the abbey at the very beginning of the 11th century, with several phases of work reshaping its appearance up to the 18th century. The original abbey was made up of three distinct spaces: the conventual enclosure reserved for the nuns (comprising church, cloister, and its peripheral buildings), a reception courtyard, and a vast space devoted to gardens and orchards.
This medieval seal matrix was discovered in the abbey’s latrines. Image: Mathilde Noël/Inrap
Building (and rebuilding) the abbey
Our early hypotheses at this stage suggest a reuse of the original village chapel as the main church of the 11th-century monastic complex. A cloister with peripheral buildings was then built and attached to the south of the place of worship, as well as a chapter room and a calefactory (warming room) in the east wing and a suspected refectory in the south wing. The cloister was probably closed to the west by another building, but almost nothing remains.
During a second phase of work in the 12th or 13th century, however, the old chapel was destroyed and a new church built on the site. Measuring 52m long, it had a transept and an apse flanked by two secondary apses. It was probably during this work that a new chapel was also erected to the south of the choir. We believe that the title of ‘Notre-Dame des Miracles’ was transferred to this new chapel, as historical texts testify to the presence of a Notre-Dame chapel at Beaumont well into the 18th century.
Phases of work have been detected, too, around the cloister with the extension of the east wing and the construction of a building that adjoins the south of the refectory. Around the 13th century, the church was enlarged again (making it 55m long in total) with the addition of an ambulatory around the choir. It was probably during this period that a rectangular building (21m by 8.50m), interpreted as the abbess’s residence, was built to the east of the cloister. This was abandoned at the end of the 14th century due to structural issues, and burned down during the 15th century.
Construction continued during the modern period. These changes mainly affected the reception courtyard with the construction of a large building (54m by 15m) that served several functions (containing parlours, the abbess’s house, and the library), and various other developments such as the creation of an orange grove or a dovecote. The last phase of work dates from 1725 and concerned a large part of the cloister. It was financed thanks to a donation from a prestigious nun: the granddaughter of King Louis XIV, who would go on to become abbess of the place a few years later. The south and west wings were destroyed and rebuilt to enlarge the cloister. It was also on this occasion that a large storeroom (22m by 5.5m) and four cellars were dug. The eastern wing remained in place, but was extended by the addition of new rooms.
Beaumont’s buried bodies
The nuns were driven out of Beaumont Abbey during the Revolution in the 18th century, and the buildings were sold to a quarryman who demolished them to resell the materials. The land went on to be used in the 19th century by a nearby hospital to grow vegetables to feed the sick. The hospital structure also used the premises to bury bodies donated to science for dissection exercises for trainee doctors, or for the burial of victims of cholera or dysentery epidemics.
In addition to examining the organisation and structure of the monastic buildings and attempting to identify the different functions of the rooms, future research at the site will focus on the different types of buried populations and their funerary practices. Indeed, several burial spaces were observed (church, cloister, chapter house, gardens, village parish cemetery, and more) and nearly 1,500 burials could be excavated in total for a period extending from the 9th to the 19th century. The anthropological study will perhaps make it possible to recognise specific groups (nuns, benefactor members, servants, the poor, and so on) and to compare them with each other on different points including health status (through palaeopathological study) and diet (by isotope analyses), as well as things like burial styles.
The work at Beaumont provides, for the first time in Europe, an exceptional opportunity for archaeologists to observe the complete evolution of a monastic establishment and its populations throughout its entire period of operation.
