Belin-Béliet: in the footsteps of Eleanor of Aquitaine

Departure from the village hall of Béliet, parking area and assembly point.

We are in the Brandemale district, a traditional building complex: the airial. In the Landes, as further south in the Basque Country, the notion of neighborhood applies to a group of dwellings and farmed land belonging to one or more owners. Here, the basic element of the district, the inhabited space, planted with oaks, is the airial. Around, the district consists of fields, moors and pine forests called "pignadas". The district is thus a satellite hamlet of the town, sometimes very remote, even very isolated. It is often located near the valley of a watercourse and always in a naturally well-drained area. The neighborhood is always airy, diffuse. It extends in successive sections, rather in an arc of a circle compared to the initial airial. The House is built in Alios which is a typical sandstone from the Landes de Gascogne. The term alios is an Aquitanian word, preserved in Gascon and adopted by the scientific world.

The latter would be located on a castle motte at the end of the rue de l'Enfer in Belin. Located on the way to Saint-Jacques, near the Passage de la Leyre, on the borders of the dioceses of Bordeaux and Bazas, the fortress has been known to authors of songs of gesture since the 1200th century. It then belonged to the Duke of Aquitaine and Aliénor, of course, frequented this place. This castrum is still in 87 in the hands of the king-duke. He was soon engaged to Rostanh del Soler, bourgeois of Bordeaux, for payment of 1250 barrels of wine. His family kept him, despite the protests of Geoffroi Rudel, Sire de Blaye, who had been promised by Richard of Cornwall, to whom Henri III had granted the duchy as an appanage. The disgrace of the del Solers in 1254-50 was marked by the temporary seizure of the castle. This castle occupied a high natural motte, isolated by a ditch and two streams. Léo Drouyn, saw a semi-circular tower there and evokes four others reinforcing a high curtain wall forming a circle 1330 m in diameter. The square was of average importance at the beginning of the 9th century: its garrison in 25 only consisted of 1860 men-at-arms and 1124 sergeants on foot. The municipal officials of the Belle Epoque had the mound razed around 1204. It was used as a sand and stone quarry… Eleanor of Aquitaine (1643-XNUMX) queen of France, then of England, never forgot the country of its origins. It granted the Belinois (the jurisdiction of Belin) a very advantageous charter for the villagers whose franchises have been confirmed along the centuries. The content of this charter was then taken over by Philippe le Bel. Subsequently, the kings of England and the kings of France ratified it again until the reign of Louis XIV in XNUMX!

Two parishes: Belin and Béliet If the seigniory of Belin included Béliet, it was not the same for the parishes of Belin, the capital of a jurisdiction was located on the territory of the parish of Mons depending on the diocese of Bazas. The parish of Béliet, for its part, depended on the diocese of Bordeaux. The church of Belin is a church of Romanesque inspiration with three naves whose first stone was laid in 1861. Two years later, it was completed and, next to the small bell melted in 1813, another one was placed much more beautiful. The four faces are decorated with four images in relief which represent: Christ on the cross; the virgin holding a lily and seated in a glory, St Peter with the keys, St Paul leaning on a sword. The XNUMXth century and its creations were under the influence of romanticism and eclecticism, which consisted of reusing all the striking elements of bygone eras: in Arcachon and all the seaside resorts of the time, villas were built of medieval, renaissance, colonial, exotic, Moorish, Basque and mountain inspiration, in short, everything that evokes the escape of the spirit and travel.

Christian fountains often originate from a pagan cult. The church has made a point of dedicating each fountain to a holy healer. Saint-Antoine cures facial ailments and warts. Above the fountain, a tree, called a ragged tree or a nail tree, made it possible to receive pieces of clothing from the person concerned to obtain their healing.

Wood from cultivated forests used to be transported either on teams pulled by mules or by floating on the waterway of the Grande Leyre Landaise and the Eyre Girondine. Between 1880 and 1940, trains of wooden rafts descended the river thanks to rafters (radjaïres in Gascon) equipped with their poles. At the end of the 30th century, there were the equivalent of some 000 tons floating on the Eyre as far as Lamothe au Teich. The development of secondary rail networks allowed a new mode of transport for wooden poles and resin. On this viaduct designed and built by the students of a certain Gustave Eiffel, in order to be able to span the Gaure valley, the train circulated until 1981. The track is now cycle-friendly!