Ovens and School of Castagnole

Site overview

In the square of the hamlet of Castagnole, we find the Church of San Lorenzo. From the old seventeenth-century construction, only the dome of the presbytery has been preserved. Information is available in documentation of pastoral visits from 1632 and in notary documents dated 1558. The bell tower bears the engraved date 1756.

The current configuration of the church dates back to 1880, when the ancient one was demolished (except for the dome) on March 14 and subsequently blessed. The church was partially rebuilt and expanded, adding what is now the nave. The works lasted less than six months, and it was dedicated to Saint Lawrence.

In 1898, the sacristy was raised by one floor to set up the schoolroom, which served until the 1960s as the seat of a multi-grade elementary school class. A few meters from the church and the school, we find the ancient oven.

The Castagnole oven is a single-chamber oven. The structure is made of stones. The roof is in lose (stone slabs), possibly coming from local lousère (flat stone quarries), with larch wood beams from the surrounding forests. The mouth of the oven is ogival in shape, the vault is domed, made of bricks, and the floor consists of square tiles made of refractory material.

Highly used in the past, it fell into disuse when the Workers’ Mutual Aid Society (Società Operaia di Mutuo Soccorso) was founded, which produced its own bread. Currently, the oven is functional and used occasionally.