St. Don Bosco, Coat-an-Doc’h (Guingamp)
In the 1930s the son of Mademoiselle Marguerite Marie de
Saint-Jouan goes to boarding school in Belgium, where he received education from
the Salesian Fathers of Don Bosco, a teaching congregation within the Roman
Catholic Church. The family decides to make available to the Salesians of Don
Bosco to start a new school in Bretagne and gives them their estate in
Coat-an-Doc’h. In 1934 Dom Bellot is asked to design to the existing castle a
new school. On the west side of the castle Bellot designs two wings with classrooms,
dormitories on the top floor and a refectory (dining hall) on the ground floor.
In the middle of the two wings, the chapel is planned, with the large staircase
in front of it.
The design of Bellot has been partially implemented. The east wing was built in
1935, next to the castle. The chapel followed in 1939. Pending the stairwell
and the west wing of the chapel was a temporary facade. The second phase is never
executed, the outbreak of the Second World War will undoubtedly have been the
reason for this.
The temporary façade is now the
remaining façade, painted in the 1960s by the art teacher of the boarding
school.
Behind the part designed by Bellot more classrooms were built in the 1960s.
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The outside walls of the capel are made of natural stone and concrete. The façade was intended as a temporary closure and is therefore of less solid
quality and artistic execution. The small door in the front of the
chapel stands, for the same reason, in no relation to the other entrances. |
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In the
interior the use of concrete for the construction is clear. The chapel doesn’t have pillars at the sides, the arch is coming
out of the sidewall. Only the
sanctuary is accentuated by a parabolic arch. Behind the mosaïc in the
wall is the sacristy. The stools, the tiles on the floor
and the windows are all in the characteristic style of Bellot. Besides
the sanctuary is the resting place of mrs. Marguerite Marie de Saint-Jouan, owner of the castle, and the resting
place of the first principle of the school: Father René Pastol, of the order of
Don Bosco.
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The congregation of Don Bosco doesn’t use the chapel often nowadays. The complex isn’t a school anymore. It is used to give youth from the city a nice holiday. The remaining fathers live in a new house, north of the chapel.
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