Abbecourt Abbey

Abbecourt Abbey (French: Abbaye d'Abbecourt; Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Abbecourt; Latin: Beata Maria de Alba Curia) is a former Premonstratensian monastery in Orgeval, Yvelines, France.

Originally a small oratory,[1] the abbey was founded, either in 1142 or 1180,[2][3] by Gasun, seigneur of Poissy.[4] It was a daughter house of Marcheroux Abbey, now in Oise.[5] The church was consecrated in 1191.

The buildings were damaged in 1340, in the Hundred Years' War, and destroyed by the English between 1420 and 1437.[1] Reconstruction began at the end of the 17th century, during the abbacy of Jean Penillon.[6] In the early 18th century a pond on the site was discovered to have supposedly health-giving mineral properties and taking its waters became an attraction for the court of Louis XV, the royal Château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye being nearby.[7]

In about 1740 the former almoner of Louis XV, the Abbé Louis Grisard,[8] replaced the guest accommodation, besides adding a gallery to the cloister and making alterations to the principal building and the dormitory. In 1741, the architect Louis François Herbet drew up plans for a new church, construction of which was completed by the architect Claude-Louis d'Aviler from 1743 to 1749. In the 1780s the dormitory was rebuilt by Jean-François Raimbert.

The monastery was suppressed in the French Revolution, when the church was destroyed. The site was used as a source of stone, and in 1827 all the remaining buildings were demolished.[2] Only a few ruins remain and the toponym "Allée d'Abbecourt".