Charron Monastery

The Charron Monastery is a former Cistercian abbey in the Charente-Maritime department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. The monastery was located in the municipality of Charron, about 17 kilometers north of La Rochelle, near the sea. The monastery was founded in 1191 as a daughter of the monastery La Grâce-Dieu in Aunis by Eleanor of Aquitaine, and thus belonged to the filiation of the mother abbey Clairvaux. After Geoffroi Ostorius, lord of Marans, had entrusted the swamps of Alouettes to the three monasteries La Grâce-Dieu, Charron, and St-Léonard-des-Chaumes for draining and use in 1192, they built a kind of dike, later known as the Bot de l'Alouette, to protect this area from flooding. The monastery was besieged by the Huguenots in 1562 but was restored in 1614. During the French Revolution, the monastery met its end in 1791.

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