Eglise St Hermeland de Guenrouët

Take a close look at this church and the position of the bell tower. It should have been erected opposite the choir, but has been placed in the centre of the church. This change was prompted by the wish of the mayor, Louis Cado, who at the time lived in the large bourgeois house next to the church, to move the bell tower, which could have overshadowed it. The building, which was completed in 1896, replaced a primitive 11th-century church that had been too badly damaged during the Revolution to be preserved, as it had been used as a barracks for the Republican gendarmes' horses. During the Pocket of Saint-Nazaire, the village came under daily bombardment and on 7 December 1944, after 3 months of shelling, the bell tower fell, three of the four bells were broken and the stained glass windows shattered. After the surrender of the Pocket in May 1945, the people of Guérande returned to their devastated villages and the church was quickly restored. As for the bell tower, its construction once again led to a little anecdote: having exhausted all their funds, they didn't have a penny left to build it, and even a subscription approved by referendum couldn't raise enough money. So the vicar Coulonniers agreed to part with a small vineyard he owned in the Muscadet region to raise the money needed to build the bell tower, which has since reached a height of 53 metres.