Éragny is a French commune located in the Val-d'Oise department
in the Île-de-France region. It is often called Éragny-sur-Oise to
distinguish it from the town of Éragny-sur-Epte.
Its
inhabitants are called the Éragniens.
The wash house (French: lavoir) in Éragny, a French commune in
the Val-d'Oise department in the Île-de-France region, was built at
the end of the 19th century. The wash house is on Rue de la
Fontaine.
The basin of the wash house is fed by a well. The
water flows from the basin into the Oise.
At the beginning of the 12th century, the land and the village,
which bore the name of Erigny, belonged to the monks of the abbey of
Saint-Martin-des-Champs.
Placed on the cliff facing north and
overlooking the Oise, Éragny was only a very modest village until
the twentieth century.
It was in 1564 that Jean d'Alesso, who
came from Italy with Saint François de Paule, bought the seigneury
of Éragny. Their coat of arms, azure with a gold saltire confined to
four silver snails, served as the basis for that of the city.
François d'Alesso, Marquis d'Eragny was Governor General of the
Antilles (? - 1691). Their descendants will extend their domain over
the town and will keep it until the Revolution when it will be
confiscated as "emigrant property".
In 1632, Charles Antoine
de Sulfour, knight, Lord of Gouzangrez was authorized to build a
chapel in his castle in Éragny.
In the 18th century, the
village was mainly concentrated on the hillside, above the
floodplains. The rest of the land was divided between crops, vines
and woods. Stone quarries were also exploited in the meander of the
Oise. At that time, the limit with Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was
formed by the “chemin de Neuville à Paris”, also called “chemin de
l'Ambassadeur” or “chemin des Chasse-Marée”, now called “rue de l
'Ambassador' who always marks the boundary between the two
municipalities and between the departments of Val-d'Oise and
Yvelines. On March 20, 1742 the castle was the scene of a crime.
Catherine Poquet, around 58 years old, widow of Alexandre Claude
François d'Alesso Marquis d'Éragny is shot dead by Charles Dudefoy,
23-year-old school teacher from Neuville. This one will justify his
gesture: "She asked me to shoot a gun in her ear in order to be able
to cure her deafness".
Arrested, he is "condemned to be hanged
and strangled until death ensues, to a gallows which will be erected
opposite the door of the castle of Eragny, and orders that his body
remains there for 24 hours and then be carried to the sinful forks
of this bailiwick, that each and every one of his goods be declared
acquired and confiscated and that on these is taken the sum of 250
pounds fine ”.
After having lodged his conviction, and received
in July 1742 letters of remission given by Louis XV, we do not know
what became of him6.
In the 19th century, an important figure
settled in: Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, famous author
of Paul et Virginie, disciple of Rousseau, took possession of the
old rectory in 1804. After the writer's death in Éragny in 1814, the
village fell back into relative anonymity.
At the end of the
19th century, Éragny had fewer than 500 inhabitants, living mainly
from agriculture and market gardening.
Thanks to the arrival
of the railway (Éragny - Neuville station), a limestone quarry was
put into operation, which until then had only served local needs.
The installation of a paper mill in the twentieth century was the
only notable industrial activity, giving Éragny a certain boost.
This stationery, which was also the first company to set up in the
new activity zone, gave its name to the district, where a very
beautiful room which housed the paper presses was transformed into
an exhibition room.
The fourteenth-century church was
destroyed in June 1944 by an English Lancaster bomber plane shot
down by the German DCA around Pontoise in the former French-origin
casemates of the Chauvineau Line during World War II.
The
development of the new agglomeration of Cergy-Pontoise, which began
in the late 1960s, has transformed the town from village to city.
Many neighborhoods have sprung up on what is called "the plateau"
and, in less than twenty years, Éragny has taken on its present face
with its approximately 16,000 inhabitants.