|
History of l'Avenc
L'Avenc is first mentioned
on 4 August 1234, when Pere of Avench swears that he
does not have possession of some books the Bishop of
Vic has been trying to get hold of. The house was, by
then, we infer, already a well-established homestead,
the kind of place a bishop might come looking for his
books. The house at that time would have been a traditional
Domus perhaps with a watchtower where our stairwell
now is, with the tiny Romanesque doorway still there.
The entrance to the kitchen, with its Templar cross
probably dates from this time, as may the kitchen itself.
The cellar beneath would have been where the animals
were kept. Some of the walls in this vicinity are particularly
old.
The whole area of El Collsacabra and nearby La Garrotxa,
El Ripollés and part of Osona suffered a series
of enormous earthquakes in 1426 and 1427. Much of Rupit
and Tavertet would have been destroyed. Olot was flattened
reporting 800 deaths. L'Avenc must have suffered badly.
Land slides followed suit and would have left a ruinous
domus: piles of rubble, broken walls and mud-covered
out houses.
Our next point of reference is 1486 (nearly sixty years
after the earthquakes which filled the cellar with rubble),
for which we have the complete inventory. The column
which today reinforces the archway in the kitchen is
mentioned then, and the archway is noted as being in
bad condition at the time of the inventory.
The house's second age of prosperity evidently arrived
in the sixteenth century, when the new wing was built-
and must have departed before the whole design was executed:
hence the half of the old house we still have. This
we call this the 'Gothic-Renaissance' part of the house,
the older part being 'Gothic-Romanesque' and are the
descriptions of the Catalan experts we have consulted.
The sixteenth century part (and possibly seventeenth
century, for we do not know when it was finished) is
very planned, very rational, and it must have taken
professional stonemasons and (we've been told) specialists
and designers from Gascony to make the windows and doorways.
The dove-tailed door-surrounds of the main doorway is
the largest of its kind in Catalunya.
(An extract from A Castle
in Spain by Matthew Parris, Penguin, 2006.)
|
