Photograph by Régis Girard, 2005

41. Maison Jarry

Also listed as 'Bagneux' and 'Saumur (1)’. [47°15´11˝ N, 0°05´55˝ E]

Location: Pays de la Loire: 49 Maine-et-Loire, ‘Saumur’ [Rue du Clois Pointu, Les Buttes, Bagneux].
Date: 1877. Erector: Auguste-Sylvain Bollée. Purchaser: M Jarry, ‘Propriétaire’.

Type:
No. 2 power head (3.5m diameter).

Mount:
a 3¾-unit column, with six two-piece wrought-iron cap-stays and three one-piece wrought-iron stabilisers.

Cap platform:
circular, with serpentine balusters. No cardinal points.

Access:
a spiral staircase with plain balusters and plain rod-type treads.

Base:
a short (approximately ¼-section) column beneath the gearbox attached to a concrete disc on top of a large rubble-built circular retaining wall, with a brick-laid lip. The enclosure is now largely grassed-over.

Pump-house:
This takes the form of a squared pavilion, with flanking indented apses and a shallow pyramidal slate (?) roof carried on wooden rafters. The ashlar walls—eight courses in the pavilion, six in each apse—rise to a dentilled architrave, and then to a cavetto-moulded cornice with a narrow coping.

Pump:
The pump is the standard three-throw type with an overhung crank. The six spokes of the flywheel are straight.

Well:
directly beneath the pump.

Storage:
a cylindrical tank is thought to have been located in the nearby outbuilding.

Status:
visited by Régis Girard in 2005, when the site and the neighbouring mansion were for sale. Condition: the machine was in surprisingly good condition for its age. However, the platform floorplates showed signs of wasting and the Papillon rotor was missing. The drop-weight had also disappeared. The Éolienne was being offered for sale on eBay at the beginning of 2014, when photographs showed that, though still standing (together with the pumphouse), condition had deteriorated.

Remarks:
among the oldest of the surviving Éoliennes, this stands on a gently-sloping site near a château in a suburb of Saumur. The buildings are currently near-derelict, and 'for sale'. The drive shaft is raised higher than normal, owing to the insertion of a short section at the base of the column, though there is nothing in the design of the pump house to suggest that anything other than the conventional three-throw pump was ever installed. Interestingly, a later curved-spoke handwheel has been mounted on the outside of one of the pump house end-walls to allow small quantities of water to be raised when the wind engine was not working.