Parçay Les Pins, information taken from Célestin Ports book published originally in 1876-1878, republished in 1989 by André Sarazin, added to in 2004.
The village is situated in the canton of Noyant (10 km away), 29km away from Saumur and 64 km away from Angers .
From Parciacus in 1070, to Parçay in 1501, Parcé sous Rillé and then Parcé sous Bourgueil, Parçay again in 1783, Parcé in 1789-92, the name Parçay Les Pins was finally adopted officially on the 14 th February 1922.
The people who live in Parçay Les Pins are called the Parcéens or the Parçayais.
As most villages, the village has been constantly getting smaller and smaller since the XVIIth century, there were 1 688 people living here in 1700, in 1999 only 1 030.
There are many remarkable hamlets around Parçay Les Pins. Célestin Port counted 78 hamlets, including Cintré manor (dating back to the XVIth century), La Roche the residence of Huet de la Channay, who died there. You can find his epithaph on the left hand wall inside the church at Linières Bouton, it says that he was “Lord of la Roche and le Pin at Parçay”.
The remaining building at la Roche is from the XVIIIth century. In 1965 at the aristocratic manor les Grands Coudray some fresques from the XVth century were discovered inside a chapel honouring St. Côme and St. Damien. Unfortunately they were covered over soon after. Most of the manors and chateaux became farms and barns.
Most of the village centre and houses dating from around the end of the XIXth century are the result of a fire that totally destroyed the original church. The first church used to be situated at the main crossroads, where the square and the Monument aux Morts is now. The inside of the church dated from around the XIIth century and the west side from around the XVIIIth century. It probably looked rather like the churches you can see in the neighbouring villages of La Pellerine and Méon.
A wooden gallery had been added for the local secondary school. On the 14 th march 1862 at 7.30pm a violent storm broke out and the lightning started a fire in the steeple and wooden framework. As the church was too small anyway, the decision was made to build a brand new one 200m to the left, which allowed us to create the actual Place Jules Desbois and another square in front of the new church. The only thing to have survived both the fire and the end of the XIXth century is a magnificent wooden Christ from the XVIIth century, restored in 2003 by Raymond Huard, and now in the safe hands of l'abbé Jacques de Singly.
In 1844 a boarding school was built in the middle of what we now call the rue de la Mairie , the whole road had had to be rebuilt. Since 1840, the houses have been built on or in line with the buildings that used to be class-rooms, this was the case of l'auberge de la Croix Verte where Jules Desbois was born.
The republican council, heavily influenced by the mayor Dr Mikalovitch, decided to build the Napoléon III style mairie in 1897.
Until the 1970's, there were many builders, carpenters, roofers, leather craftsmen, cobblers, blacksmiths, bakers, butchers, mecanics, material salesmen, herbalists... The arrival of machines had the same effect here as elsewhere and soon emptied the productive world that had made the village self-sufficient during the Second World War.
After the war a group of farmers appeared with new sorts of crops that eventually formed la coopérative agricole in 1948. The company bought the old buildings of the secondary school from the village in order to expand the factory, and the profit made from the sale of the buildings went towards buying the land and building the foundations of the retirement home.
Recent important changes include the roads to the East and North-West of the village, allowing lorries to reach the fruit factory without going through the village centre and the creation of the Jules Desbois Museum in 1987 and its transfer in 2001 to a bigger and better building enabling it to become a member of the prestigious Musée de France group in 2001.
