Les Clayes-sous-Bois

Les Clayes-sous-Bois is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the center. The Clayes-sous-Bois inhabitants are called "Clétiens".

Geography

The commune of Les Clayes-sous-Bois is located about 14 km from Versailles and 30 km from Paris, in the southwest of the Versailles plain. The commune is highly urbanized, with mostly single-family housing, except for the southern part of the commune, which is covered by a part of the Bois-d'Arcy forest.
It borders the cities of Chavenay, Villepreux, Bois-d'Arcy, Trappes to and Plaisir.
The commune is irrigated in the South by the Maldroit river, a tributary of the Mauldre.
It is located entirely in the Mauldre watershed, managed since 1992 by the COBAHMA, under the aegis of the Yvelines General Council, and for which a water development and management plan has been implemented. However, it is partially in the Maldroit sub-basin and for the rest in the rivulet de Gally sub-basin, although not crossed by the rivulet itself.

Economy

Les Clayes-sous-Bois, like most towns in the Île-de-France region, has a large number of businesses, mainly in commerce and services, located in five industrial and commercial zones. One of the most important of these is Atos a computer center.
Three regional shopping centers to the north of the municipality, bordering the railroad tracks, constitute the other most important areas with Alpha Park, Alpha Park 2 and One Nation Paris.
Located on Avenue du Général-Leclerc, the communal market is open on Thursdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.44
In 2010, the median fiscal income per household was €37.589, which ranked Les Clayes-sous-Bois 4.075th among the 31.525 municipalities with more than 39 households in metropolitan France.

Policy and population

After being part of the group of communes of the West Paris region, Les Clayes-sous-Bois became part of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines agglomeration community on 1 January 2016

Twinnings

The twinning with Röthenbach was established by the mayors André Boulay and Karl Fischer in 1964, one year after the signature of the "Élysée Treaty", a friendship treaty signed at the Élysée Palace by the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the French president Charles de Gaulle.The group of "the Friends of the Woods" already existed since 1962, it organized meetings between the young people of the two cities. In 1964, immediately afterward, a twinning committee was created. On Easter 1965, a soccer match between the teams of the two towns took place. In October 1995, the 30th anniversary of the twinning was celebrated with discussions between veterans and the organization of painting exhibitions and tennis matches. In September 1999, the Twinning Committee introduced German classes in the "Maison des jeunes et de la culture des Clayes ". In both cities, the Twinning Committee initiated language classes, trips, youth exchanges between schools and between artists, as well as other activities such as : petanque tournament on July 14 and meetings between the firemen of both cities.
The city is also twinned with the city of Ponte da Barca since 2002.

Population

The population of the commune is relatively young. The rate of people over 60 years of age is lower than the national rate. Like the national and departmental allocations, the female population of the municipality is higher than the male population.
The distribution of the commune's population by age group in 2017 is as follows:

49.1% men ;
50.9% women.
History

Prehistory

Prehistoric elements such as carved axes and bronze bracelets have been discovered on the site of Les Clayes and are now exhibited in the national archaeology museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, testifying its occupation since prehistoric times.

Middle Ages

A stone path, of which there are still vestiges, passed through the village. It is nowadays the "Chemin aux Bœufs" . As its name indicates, this secondary road was used for cattle transport from Normandy; the animals were then inspected in Chavenay and put on sale at the Poissy and Saint-Germain-en-Laye markets .
In the Middle Ages, the partition of the territory of the old Roman Empire began, giving rise to fiefdoms ruled by lords; in exchange for the protection of the latter, the peasants could cultivate their lands in security.
At the beginning of the 12th century, the lands of Clais belonged to Simon de Cloyes. In 1118, he had a castle built near the church. The church was built on the upper part of the village under the reign of Philip I. Excavations carried out in 1875 during the construction of the enclosing wall of the Saint-Martin cemetery revealed a forgotten cellar that belonged to the castle. In 1160, the bishop of Chartres, Robert III, assign the parish of Les Clayes to the abbey of Saint-Cyr, which was confirmed by Pope Alexander III in a bull three years later.
In 1357, the troops of the King of Navarre, Charles le Mauvais, settled for three months in the villages of Les Clayes, Villepreux and Trappes, plundering the parishes. A battle between the French royal troops and those of the King of Navarre took place east of the village, in a valley known as "Près Bataille". In 1360, the king's squire Pierre Potel had a seigniorial hotel built in the south of the village : a hunting lodge near the Bois d'Arcy forest. The south wing, the only vestige since 1790, now houses the municipal library. This hotel was built in the Val Gally area, on the site of a country house belonging to the nuns of Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Saint-Cyr, which was burned down during the occupation of Charles le Mauvais. The seigniorial mansion was a square surrounded by a double enclosure, a defensive wall and ditches which remained until 1866, when they were filled in by Mr. Martignon.
In 1368, the lands of the Clayes belonged to Jean de Meslindon, ally of the Villeneuve family until 1517. Then to four other owners: Lambert Maigret, comptroller general, André Leroy, notary and secretary of François I, Gaillard Spifaine, Comptroller General of Finance and Guillaume Poyet, Second President of the Parliament of Paris.

Modern times

In 1537 the seigneury of “Clais” was confiscated from its indebted owner, Gaillard Spifaine, and returned to the king of France. On 24 December 1546 Anne de Pisseleu, favorite of François I, obtains from her lover the lands of “ Clayes”, of which she becomes the chatelaine.
In 1556, Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II, became the owner, ten years after Anne de Pisseleu was exiled and the seigneury confiscated in favor of the new king. Diane uses it as a hunting relay. The king's mistress also planted the famous «tree of Diana» in the parc. The domain passed on to his daughter Françoise de Brézé, who sold it to François Coignet, notary and secretary to the seigneur of Pontchartrain.
In 1573, a year before ascending to the throne, the future Henry III put the Château of Clais under royal protection. A trace remains above a door of the main body of the former hunting relay: it is a «safeguard», a plate representing a shield or a blazon, on which are engraved three lilies surrounded by a necklace of the Saint-Laurent Michel order with a crown sit on top it.
In 1578, in a letter the Bishop of Chartres Nicolas de Thou wrote: “We have the humble plea of the villagers and inhabitants of the Clais, in our diocese dedicated and consecrated to God the church built under the invocation of Saint Martin where the relics of the arm of Saint Margaret are kept”. Under the Ancien Régime, the parish of Clais was supposed to receive one-tenth of the crop of the Saint Cyr abbess, but in reality, the parish priests received only a small part of it, the majority remaining in the hands of the ecclesiastics.

Contemporary era

The French Revolution

At the beginning of the French Revolution, grievance notebooks were written. The Cletians asked for "the abolition of seigneurial rights, the abolition of the captaincies forbidding them to hunt and the opening of a road from Les Clayes to Saint-Cyr to obtain provisions and trade".The first local council was elected on 26 March 1791. On 20 November 1791 the parish priest Le Duc was relieved of his duties as mayor and replaced by Nicolas Barré, prosecutor of the town. In October 1793, one of the two bells of the church was sent to the cannon foundry. On the 11th of February 1793, Catholic worship ceased and the church's silver ornaments and vases were donated for the "support of the Republic". A part of the old seigniorial castle was destroyed. Only the south wing remains today.

The Clayes castle

In front of the old hunting lodge, a new neo-classical castle was built between 1800 and 1816 by the Delaborne family, owners of land in Villepreux. A chapel was also built and the outbuildings were added to the old segniorial house.
Made of stone and brick, the building's façade is rectangular, framed by two circular towers and roofs pierced by four bull's eyes windows. The pediments of the slate roof are triangular and the upper floor windows have railings ; a belfry adorned with a clock is installed in the middle of the roof, symbolizing the power of the building, when Les Clayes did not yet have a real town hall. The chapel is topped by a tapered roof and a cross. In 1819, the Delaborne's son added the large gate that marks the entrance of the domain. Several owners then succeed each other. Madame Bloch-Levallois bought the castle in 1915, followed in the 1920s by Jeanne Pata de Montagnac, an amateur lyric singer known for her beauty, who sang in the Parisian musical salon of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux. Divorced from Maximilian von Jaunez, she began the restoration of the castle of Clayes, however she sold it after her remarriage in 1925 with Charles de Polignac.In 1926, Lucy and Jos Hessel, paintings traders, acquired the castle and starting a high social life, inviting personalities like the writer Tristan Bernard, the painter Édouard Vuillard and the politician Léon Blum