La crau city

A city between sea and countryside, located between Toulon and Hyères, close to the seaside station of Carqueiranne. A city, in spite of the madness of the urban development in our department, succeeds in growing peacefully, by preserving its identity and its parochialism.

La Crau accomodates today nearly 17.000 inhabitants out of 3800 hectares, adapts to this increasing demography by proposing infrastructures of quality, increasingly more powerful. Cordial and accessible, it made good things in life around its places there, in its commercial street, with its twice-weekly market and its bowlers which like to be found each day in the shade of the plane trees. It is also a place where the inhabitants can gather at the time them annual festivals and contribute to make live its heart.

At 5 km of the sea, with 80% of sunning days per annum and 1300 hectares timbered, La Crau offers a pleasant framework of life, far from the tumult of the great coastal stations and enjoys a great accessibility from the presence of a SNCF railway station, by its proximity with the wearing of Toulon, the airport of Hyères, and the motorway.

Side river, La Crau is bordered by Réal Martin. It is also crossed by Gapeau (river whose source is at Signes) from which Béal, small river built in the XV century derives to supply the mills with flour, also being used for the irrigation of the cultures, and, until in the Sixties, of laundrette.

Side hill, it is the Fenouillet mount which dominates our plain and which separates it from Hyères. You find on the heights of Fenouillet the vault Notre-Dame de Consolation, built in 1850 and renovated in 2004.

La Crau includes many hamlets or said places, such as Notre Dame, Martins, Goys Founiers, …

The hamlet of Moutonne, which counts nearly 4000 inhabitants today, constitutes a village with whole share. Infrastructures of scale were built there with the district of Estagnol like the school Jules Ferry, the gymnasium of Estagnol, or the commercial pole.

The Fenouillet Mount rises between Crau and Hyères and fact part of mountainous chain the “Maurettes” which is between the two communes. Top (291 m), you can enjoy an incomparable circular sight: gold the Islands, the town of Hyères, the Solid mass of the Moors, Crau, the Guard, Toulon…

The origin of its name seems to come from Fennel, this plant formerly cultivated with Crau. In addition, in 1840, a distilling located at the district of Crimsons started to produce a liquor known as “of Fenouillet” and this until 1918.

It is the old working of Crau.

Indeed, it was found there vestiges dating from the Roman epoch. The Romans created there a relay with baths, it was the first construction of the commune.

Later, the Jeanne Queen of Provence made build a small residence and today still, you have the possibility of seeing the place and the bacon whose it received “her people”. You also discover the ruins of a vault and a cemetery.

Then at the 18th, century the small village moved with the locality “Panouche” (current centre town) in consequence of the gathering commercial. Notre Dame became a hamlet.

 Charming small valley at the edge of the river from where the Romans and later Hyèrois made come the drinking water for their consumption. The source was with the place says “Horseshoe of Monache”.

In 1830, the owner of a large hotel of Toulon made there build a Manor house in the style of Provence, it is told that the workmen who worked there and who built the farm, the pigeon one, the refrigerator and all the dependences, there worked hard quickly and of good heart because they were well paid: a penny per day !

But this hotel of the name of SALC was player and it lost with the play its beautiful castle which returned to English of the name of NEGL. With its death, the children shared the goods, the Field was sold in 1903 to Mr MOYE to which the heirs are always owners: the DART Family.

It is about a construction made up of a frame of 16 m out of 60 m, with a height of the ditch to the roof of 12,5 m; the walls are with slope of 20%, a thickness of 1,60 with the short-nap cloth of the ground and 1 m at the top. Residence comprised 4 turns, the demolition was used to fill the ditch which surrounded the castle, with 8 meters broad and 3,50 m of depth. There remains only that of the southern frontage, crossed by a passage on vault of 5 m which ended formerly in a drawbridge in front of the only entry in the south.

The frontage was replaced today by a cross wall and surface made available was transformed into terrace. Tamagnon had a vault. The field remained property of Family CORDEIL of TAMAGNON on several generations. Paul of RUYTER, son-in-law of Paul CORDEIL, is at the origin of the name of the close district: Ruytèle.