Doudeville

Doudeville
Coat of arms
Doudeville
Location within Upper Normandy region Doudeville
Coordinates:
Country	France
Region	Normandy
Department	Seine-Maritime
Arrondissement	Rouen
Canton	Doudeville
Government
• Mayor	Daniel Durecu
Area1	14.51 km2 (5.60 sq mi)
Population (2006)2	2,613
• Density	180/km2 (470/sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code	76219 / 76560
Elevation	85–156 m (279–512 ft) (avg. 120 m or 390 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Doudeville is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France.

Geography

Called the flax capital, the town is situated at the centre of the Pays de Caux, the chalk plateau in High Normandy and one widely known for its fields of blue-flowered flax.

• Coordinates: 0.785 E, 49.722 N.
• Altitude of the commune: mean 120 m, lowest: 85 and highest 156 m.
• Area of the commune: 14.51 km² (5.60 sq mi).
• Altitude of the canton: about 150 m (500 ft.
• Area of the canton: 101.58 km² (39.22 sq mi).

Demography

Since 1793, the population has varied between 3,792 and 1,993. In the early 21st century, it is 87% of that at the dawn of the nineteenth, when there was more demand for labour on the land.

Historical population
Year	Pop.	±%
1793	3,025	—
1800	2,957	−2.2%
1806	2,984	+0.9%
1821	2,896	−2.9%
1831	3,172	+9.5%
1836	3,308	+4.3%
1841	3,688	+11.5%
1846	3,792	+2.8%
1851	3,767	−0.7%
1856	3,495	−7.2%
1861	3,622	+3.6%
1866	3,587	−1.0%
1872	3,314	−7.6%
1876	3,207	−3.2%
1881	2,870	−10.5%
1886	2,983	+3.9%
1891	2,907	−2.5%
1896	2,788	−4.1%
1901	2,645	−5.1%
1906	2,537	−4.1%
1911	2,418	−4.7%
1921	2,080	−14.0%
1926	2,130	+2.4%
1931	2,145	+0.7%
1936	2,173	+1.3%
1946	2,152	−1.0%
1954	2,150	−0.1%
1962	2,087	−2.9%
1968	1,993	−4.5%
1975	2,161	+8.4%
1982	2,315	+7.1%
1990	2,492	+7.6%
1999	2,526	+1.4%
2006	2,563	+1.5%
Source: Ehess et INSEE

History

At Doudeville, the General Assemblies of linen producers were held regularly - which is where the idea of Doudeville's claim to be linen capital arose. In the nineteenth century, there was a trade in linen cloth and canvas; enough to employ 8,000 people in ten businesses in the region.

Literary connection

Guy de Maupassant set a good number of his stories in this region. "The yard of the farm, enclosed by trees, seemed to sleep ... The shade of the apple trees gathered itself round their feet and the thatched roofs of the buildings at the summit of which grew irises ..." from The Story of a Farm Girl (Histoire d'une fille de ferme) by Guy de Maupassant. For more, see Pays de Caux.

In Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" Charles' father dies in Doudeville following a dinner with old military friends.

Heraldry

The arms of Doudeville are blazoned : Azure, a bend sinister, overall 3 sacks of wheat, the bottommost covering a sickle Or, and on a chief gules, 3 bees proper.

Notable buildings

There are castles, manor houses with their dovecotes, majestic churches, little chapels and roadside calvaries carved from sandstone.

• Seventeenth century church.
• Château de Galleville (1680).
• In the villages around, imposing farms rub shoulders with the workers' and weaver's cottages.
• In the main villages around are the masters' houses of the rich manufacturers and merchants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who made their fortunes in the linen trade.
• For manor houses (manoirs), see Pays de Caux.

Town hall

The Hôtel de Ville is a very large building in the Place du Général de Gaulle which was formerly la Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. It was built in about 1780 by François Louis Leseigneur; lord of Reuville and Galleville. Until the early nineteenth century, this was the trading centre for the linen cloth and siamoise, a cotton cloth which was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1852, the building was bought by the town and refurbished. At that time, the ground floor was a grain market, a prison and the caretaker’s lodging. The first floor housed the places in which the duties of the mayor and of the justices of the peace were carried out. At one time, as in many market halls, the ground floor was not fully enclosed. There were wide arched openings. The square in front of it held several small market buildings where traders such as pork butchers, butchers and shoemakers worked. It has undergone a major refurbishment which was due for completion in September 2007.

Events

• In June, in the season of the blue flowers, the town has its flax (linen) festival.

Twin towns

• Bad Nenndorf, Lower Saxony, Germany, in 1978
• Bourne in Lincolnshire, England in October 1989

See also

• Communes of the Seine-Maritime department
• Seine-Maritime
• Normandy

References

• INSEE

External links

• Administrative Doudeville (in French)
• Pictures of Doudeville (French)
• INSEE statistics for Doudeville