St. Martin's Church

The Saint-Martin church is a Catholic parish church located in Montjavoult, in the department of Oise, France. Built on the top of a hill, at 207 m of altitude, it marks the landscape for several kilometers around, and represents one of the main monuments of the former canton of Chaumont-en-Vexin. Its large Renaissance portal, built around 1565 by Jean Grappin, from Gisors, constitutes its most remarkable element. Like the voluminous bell tower of the same period that adjoins it to the west, it would be worthy of a large city church. Inside, the south aisle, vaulted to the same height as the central nave, forms with the nave a vast, unified volume of slender proportions, unexpected in a village that is not very important today. Its late flamboyant style integrates some Renaissance elements. The rest of the church is much more modest, and was built mostly between the end of the 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th century in the flamboyant gothic style, partly using older structures, notably the base of a 12th century central bell tower. In the nave as well as in the choir and its side aisles, we can observe atypical types of pillars and particular ways of dropping the vaults, which allows us to conclude that it is related to the church of Parnes. However, a part of the 11th century Romanesque church still remains. It is the north aisle of the nave, which opens with three semicircular arches without any particular style, but has inside a very old barrel vault reinforced by four double arches deformed under the weight of the vault. The great sobriety of the architecture and the renovation of the windows and buttresses at the beginning of the 18th century lead to confusion with a neo-classical construction. The church of Saint-Martin was classified as a historical monument by decree of October 22, 1913, and is today in a good state of conservation, including its interesting furniture. It is now affiliated with the parish of Saint-François-d'Assise du Vexin with headquarters in Chaumont-en-Vexin, which has suspended the celebration of Sunday masses in 2018.