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Le Thor of the Legends
"Thort is a city so old that one did not know the origin of it, because it was founded before the empire and the reign of Charlemagne”
François de Brugeron, in charge of the inventory with the seigniors, 1696
At the Beginning...
... was a legend!
Taurum Stella Ducit
The legends, many and old in Le Thor, agreeably come to mitigate the gaps of the memory. The blazon and the slogan of the community are the subject of several mysterious stories going up to its foundation. One of them, the most known, tells the story of a herd of bulls coming to water itself close to Le Thor and whose behaviour aroused the attention of the guardian: under the feet of one of the animals, laid in mud, the statue of a Virgin. The Charlemagne emperor, with the wind of the news, decided to build the church of Le Thor, Notre Dame du Lac.
Country of Sorgues
a long time of work!
Probably, it is towards 750 that the marshes of Trentin would have been conceded at a small community. The name of Le Thor could have a direct relation with the hill of Thouzon, whose strengthened monastery, sheltering since the 13th century Benedictines monks, constituted during the Middle Ages a refuge and a harbour of stability for the inhabitants.
These first Thorois will work nature, giving to the Sorgue its channels and transforming the marsh into a green country.
Majestic Vestiques of the Middle Age
From these centuries of obstinate work, in one often disturbed time, the legends(...) and the marks of the history remain. Notre Dame du Lac, classified among the oldest churches of Europe, and the monastery of Thouzon, patiently renovated by the voluntary ones, testify a rich and long past.
But from the charm of the lanes of the old city to the bridges and masonries of the neighbourhoods, the history remains in the heart of the life of Thorois people.
From Garancine to Chasselas
... an unceasingly renewed vitality!
At the time of the industrial revolution, agriculture and industry are combined in Le Thor. The many mills and the factories located on the edges of Sorgue, present since the Middle Age, are reconverted during the time, passing according to needs', of plaster works to the paper mill, the tannery to the sawmill... But the factories "à garance", treating this crop plant for the pigment of the uniforms of the French Army, will mark the memories durably.
The end of the 19th century is less amusing for the mills, the culture of the garance disappeared with the invention of a synthetic substitute.
As for the vine growing, it suffers from the devastations from phylloxera. It is thanks to the inventiveness of one Thorois, Doctor Seigle, that the parasite is fought effectively. From the beginning of the century to the Thirties, Le Thor becomes the world market of chasselas...
Roots & Continuity
Since the Seventies, the changes are important. Reduction in importance of agriculture and considerable demographic growth appear among the challenges to take up. It is under the mandate of Mr. MANUAL Gaston, mayor from 1977 to 1989, that an important turn is taken, with the installation of the first zones of activities and the equipment in infrastructures, for the needs for the population increasingly younger and bigger. The team currently in place than takes the changing to look further into this adaptation (creation of the tourism office, municipalization of the crib, restoration of the old people's home etc...), seeing itself granting in 1991 the golden Marianne reward for its dynamism and its good management.
