14. PRESBYTERY

Before you stands the former presbytery of Cahagnes, where the priest serving the parish remained until the middle of the 20th century.     Now a leisure centre, it bears witness to the cure’s past. Following donations and exchanges from the lords of Cahagnes and the English priory of Merton, it became the possession of the abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Val, at Saint-Omer, near Clécy, shortly before 1273. The year in which Pope Gregory X confirmed all his donations received by the abbey. Transformed into a priory, the benefit of Sainte-Marie de Cahagnes was regular, which meant that the abbey appointed one of its religious to administer it. Dom Ygou will be his last prior. Afflicted by the first revolutionary measures that undermined religious institutions, he died in March 1791. His successor did not have the opportunity to settle down. A priest juror, Jean Gilles Lepetit, had just been appointed. Two years later, he and his vicar were driven out by the population. Is it a coincidence or an episcopal will that the first post-concordat parish priest was a former religious of Notre-Dame-du-Val. His installation met the hostility of Cahagnais priests probably jealous of his appointment. Let us note in passing that except Thomas de Siresme, son of the lord of Ferrière and of a part of Cahagnes, no cahagnais seems to have administered the priory, at least since 1500. The priory of Cahagnes alone brought 15.6% of the abbey’s receipts for the year 1720. The thousand hundred books came exclusively from the tithes collected on all the features of the parish. Dismantled during the Revolution, the possessions of the parish of Cahagnes were mainly concentrated in a single section, the cutting of which still follows the route of communications of the northwest part of the village. The lower part was the presbytery. The one extended then to the road of Caumont-Aunay, which crosses the village. The upper part, composed exclusively of pieces of land, was to the right of the way up from the village to the school group. All the facilities, buildings and land of the cider factory belong to this zone, delimited by the roads formerly named Vire, Saint-Lô and Briquessard. Let us also note, and this makes perfect sense, the current Christmas Room. Dom Siresme had opened there around 1740 the first school of the village.