[ History ] |
The story of the Domaine des Granges melts with that of L’Isle sur la Sorgue, where sea was reigning in the Secondary Age. We have to wait until Third Age to see the Rhone valley fall down and th mounts of Vaucluse emerge out of it, and so forth the plateau of le Bosquet. Inhabitated by farmer-warriors coming from the Duna valley, the undersoil of this place shows many memories from this period as some ancient funerary stones, carved in the melasse (a mix of marl and grey). In the year 600 B.C. , the Gallic troops came to settle in our Comtat Venaissin, named after its resemblance with Venice and its numerous channels. The historians J de Joanis and Ceccarelli talk about the Oppidum of le Bosquet and of Margoye, its neighbour, as the cradle of Machao, the former name of L’Isle sur la Sorgue. Ancient coins and weapons are the testimony of the age of le Bosquet. From the XIIth century on, our small city was already a prosperous centre. Many confraternities were coexisting there. The most important one was first this of the fishermen; then came the shoemakers, the gardeners and so on. Thanks to its Sorgues rivers, L’Isle became very quickly the place for many industries to settle: whool, oil, leather, silk and mirror factories, which were needing clear and fluent water, were flourishing. The implementation of paper mills in the XIIIth century preceded that of oil mills, due to the intense exploitation of olive trees in the region, as of wheat and grape. All this made L’Isle become a trading and industrial centre, what was first impredicatable. |