First corner · Croisée

The round washhouse1758 — a basin, a low wall, a roof like half a drum, and fires for ash

It is round. That is the first thing, and it surprised me, because in my image the washhouse was long. Here the basin is a circle about fourteen metres across, and the roof follows it: a curved band of old tiles on wooden posts, set against a wall of rough stone, so that the whole thing looks like half a drum with its skin taken off. The sources call it a demi-rotonde, a half rotunda. The washerwomen worked under it, out of the rain.

It was built in 1758. Before that, the spring was just a spring. Then a local lawyer and royal official named Louis d'Éon had it turned into a lavoir, a place to wash. Two details from the description stayed with me. The first is a low wall inside the basin, between the spring itself and the ring of water where the washing was done, so that the soap would not foul the source. The washing went round the edge; the spring stayed clean in the middle.

The second is the fires. Around the rim there were hearths, and the ash they made was used for the washing itself. Wood ash and water make lye, and lye cleans. So the round house was also a small factory of fire next to the cold water, and the women carried both.

Here is where I have to be careful. In my nine words, the washhouse was a house of voices, the one place in the village where women spoke to each other with no one listening. I believe that is true of washhouses in general, but none of my sources about this one says it. So I leave it as what it is: the image I came with. The water here has been running since long before 1758, and the voices, if they were here, have gone into it.

The washhouse has been a protected historic monument since 1920. The facts on this page come from the French and English Wikipedia articles on the Fosse Dionne.