Saint-Wandrille-Rançon (canton of Caudebec-en -Caux, Seine-Maritime) Church of Notre-Dame in Rançon

    Rançon was one of the properties of the abbey of Fontenelle which, in 1024 refers to a charter of the Duke of Normandy, Richard II. The village church which is now attached to the commune of Saint-Wandrille, is a good example of the rural churches built at the end of the 11th century. The building has a cruciform ground plan. Its choir culminates in an apse reinforced on the outside with flat buttresses and cornice bracket. At the transept crossing a fine square plan Romanesque tower rises up, with meticulous bonding work and pierced on three sides with a window divided by a small column. In the nave, the aisles have disappeared; on the north side, full arches which are now walled, descend onto quadrangular piers in the middle of which a column is inserted; this is probably a slightly clumsy but appealing replica of the magnificent alternation of supports in the nave of Notre-Dame in Jumièges.

Henry Decaëns

Bibliography

- Cochet (Abbé). - Les églises de l'arrondissement d'Yvetot, 2e éd., tome 1, p. 80-84.