Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême
The village as seen on the picture used to be called Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême. Today it is a suburb of the town of Bellême (out of the picture to the right). It started as a little hamlet next to a fort. Yves du Creil (died in 987), the first lord of Bellême at the beginning of the feodal period built his fort here, more likely a wooden structure on an man made mound, surrounded by a moat. This was quickly replaced by a stone structure, including a dungeon. Later, the town of Bellême came into existence, about a kilometer to the east, at the crossroad of two old roman roads. The hamlet came to be known as Vieux-Bellême and eventually as Saint-Martin du Vieux-Bellême. The fortress was demolished during the XV century by the duke of Warwick, governor of Bellême. Today's manor is a XIX century private construction.
The forest in the back is the Forest of Bellême, a protected remnant of the old growth very dense hard wood forest that used to cover all of the Perche province (the name Perche means wood log in old Frankish). The difficulty of penetration and lack of navigable rivers explain why the area was settled around the X century only, initially by monk settlers, and easily cut into fiefdoms by warlords who declared themselves owners, despite the king's rule.
The picture of the village above is taken from the site where the queen Blanche de Castille and her son the future Saint-Louis, established their camp, while putting the siege to the fortress of Bellême in 1228 to submit the turbulent warlords faction.
