The hamlet’s former school

Typical of late 19th-century architecture, the building is topped by a hipped roof and boasts a sturdy pegged wooden framework testifying to the fine reputation of La Perrière’s carpenters. Its painted trompe-l’oeil corner decorations are still intact.Until 1952, the school had a classroom that could accommodate up to 35 pupils. It was an itinerant facility as the hamlet’s inhabitants moved house according to season. From the hamlet below to the one in the middle, and then higher up to Villarnard, and then down again following the same pattern in reverse. The schoolmistress started the school year on the 1 October, closing the school two weeks later when the children’s families had to make their way down to Champétel for the harvesting and apple-picking season, emptying Villarnard of its population. She then opened up Vignotan’s school. With the coming of winter, all the families made their way back up to Villarnard as the hamlet’s barns stored the hay used to feed their cattle.They stayed there until spring, when then the schoolmistress again closed the school so as to enable the families to go and work in the valley’s fields and plant their crops before returning to Villarnard later with their livestock. Although it was an itinerant school, the mistress always taught the same pupils. In the summer, as she had rather fewer pupils in her class every day, she packed her knapsack with books and went up to the pastures of Le Bouc Blanc with the animals. So it was that she followed her pupils as their families moved from one spot to another, and, high up in the mountains, taught them the names of their peaks and read them stories.