Founded in 1111, Fontdouce Abbey is a small-scale monastery during the first decades. From the 13th century, the abbey becomes richer thanks to donations, especially the ones of Eleanor of Aquitaine. A second monastery is then built next to the first one. The of the golden age lasted until the Wars of Religion at the end of the 16th century.
The community survived until the French Revolution when Fontdouce suffered a heavy damage again. The last monks living there were deported. After the Revolution, the site was sold as a national property to ancestors of the current owners. It is then turned into a farm and modified.
Fontdouce Abbey was restored since 1970. Today the site is open to the public and contains Gothic hall, Romanesque chapels and gardens.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).