Limeuil

Limeuil
Limeuil
Location within Nouvelle-Aquitaine region  Limeuil
Coordinates: 44°53′10″N 0°53′23″E / 44.8861°N 0.8897°E / 44.8861; 0.8897Coordinates: 44°53′10″N 0°53′23″E / 44.8861°N 0.8897°E / 44.8861; 0.8897
Country	France
Region	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Department	Dordogne
Arrondissement	Bergerac
Canton	Sainte-Alvère
Intercommunality	La vallée d'Homme
Government
• Mayor (from 2014)	Jean-Claude Hervé
Area1	10.57 km2 (4.08 sq mi)
Population (2008)2	332
• Density	31/km2 (81/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
INSEE/Postal code	24240 /24510
Elevation	45–200 m (148–656 ft) (avg. 50 m or 160 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Limeuil (Occitan: Limuèlh – pron: lee-may) is a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.

Limeuil village is located at the confluence of the Dordogne and Vézère rivers. Historically this location at the meeting of the two major local rivers gave Limeuil immense importance – both commercially and strategically. In medieval times, the rivers were the highways of trade, and to be at the convergence of two of them was a unique advantage in the region: this was, historically, primarily a wine-producing area, much of the wine quite 'rough', but the casks of relatively better wine were delivered into the 'chais' at Limeuil, for subsequent delivery downstream to Bordeaux, on large, flat-bottomed 'gabarres' [See 'the wine trade', below]. The rivermen had to be accommodated here, and to this day the riverside bar/restaurant bears the name L'ancre de Salut – a boatsman's term meaning literally 'the safety anchor', a place where the rivermen could find food, wine, a bed, and rest, before their return up river. The church at the top of the village [there are two churches – see 'Churches' below] is, significantly, named after Ste Catherine, who was the patron saint of boat people. Strategically, Limeuil consequently had to defend itself (and its inhabitants) from the relentless waves of territory-grabbing that arose from the Hundred Years' War, and the Wars of Religion – endless 'chevauchées' [see 'Medieval Wars' below] that would see the locality relentlessly under attack, for over two hundred years (the so-called Hundred Years' War lasted, in fact, for 116 years!) The hillside promontory on which the village is situated provides a natural defence – and was surmounted by a chateau, enclosed within its defensive circular stone walls [see 'The Chateau'] below.

Today this unique medieval village structure remains almost intact, and has now been almost completely restored, with great care, by successive property owners – substantially second-home buyers, and a handful of remaining old families. Unlike all too many French villages, Time has passed it by, leaving it without reconstruction or extension. When the river trade collapsed through the devastation of the vineyards caused by Phylloxera, [see 'Wine Production' below] and communication was overtaken, first by rough roads, and then in the last century by a network of trains, with the depopulation that followed the Second World War the village lost its purpose, and – apart from the agricultural work available to the families down on 'the plain' (the adjoining richly fertile river flood-plain) – the houses within the walled 'bourg' emptied, and consequently fell into dis-repair, even collapse. But the prehistoric stone of Périgord is indestructible. Three of the original four entrance gates into the defensively-walled village still stand; and beyond them you walk onto the river bank, or just out into green fields, as you would have done 800 years ago.