Chambourg-sur-Indre (, literally Chambourg on Indre) is a commune in the department of Indre-et-Loire in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France.
Perhaps already occupied in the Neolithic era, the site was colonized at the time of the Roman Empire; witnessed by many traces of an aqueduct, a Roman villa, a Roman road. Hosting a Viguerie (medieval administrative court) and a medieval fief, Chambourg became a commune in 1789, following an exchange of hamlets hitherto undivided with its neighbor Chédigny.
Formed as Chambourg-sur-Indre in 1920, the town is one of the few rural areas of Lochois that as not experienced population decline in the 20th century. Over the last 30 years, agriculture in the community has refocused around large farms specializing in the cultivation of cereals, oil seeds and protein crops. In industry, since 1961, Chambourg-sur-Indre has welcomed a major French company in the field of traffic signs.
Between the Gâtine of Loches plateau, the Loches forest and the Indre valley, Chambourg has in its territory varied wildlife worthy of being partially integrated with multiple national conservation efforts including (ZNIEFF) and (Natura 2000) for the assessment and protection of biodiversity.
Geography
Location and surrounding communities The town of Chambourg-sur-Indre is located in the southeast quadrant of the Indre-et-Loire department, in the historical region of Touraine. Chambourg-sur-Indre is located at southeast of Tours (prefecture of the Indre-et-Loire department), as the crow flies and north of Loches.
Geology and topology The main geological formation Chambourg-sur-Indre is Cenomanian sandstone, deposited about 95 million years (Ma) ago by a sea that covered Touraine. Deposits laid on top of this are a yellow Turonian limestone (deposited 90 Ma), then a layer of Senonian chalk (between 89 and 65.5 Ma); the sea receded at the end of this period, which corresponds to the end of Mesozoic era. In the northwest corner of the commune, a different seas deposited the limestone lake in the middle and the end of the Eocene epoch (37 to 34 Ma), characteristic of the small fertile agricultural region of Champeigne tourangelle. The rest of the plateau is irregularly covered with loess (wind blown sediment) from the Quaternary period, forms an infertile soil called "bournais". The valleys of the Indre and its tributaries, which have cut the base of the limestone plateau during alternating glacial and interglacial periods of the Pleistocene, are covered with recent alluvium, giving the soil a hydromorphous tendency, often with a shallow water table. The slopes between the plateau and the valleys are eroded washed silt or gravel deposits and clay from the Turonian and Senonian strata; this type of soil is called "perruche" (parakeet) in the Loire Valley.
The land area of Chambourg-sur-Indre is 28.4 km2 (in 2018), the average area of a French commune being 15.8 km2.
The altitude of this area varies between and . The lowest point is on the edge of Indre within the municipal boundary of Azay-sur-Indre and the highest is on the west plateau, bordering Chanceaux-près-Loches and Dolus-le-Sec.
Natural landscapes Woods and forests are still present in Chambourg-sur-Indre where they still account for about a fifth of the total area of the municipality. They are found in the east, near Saint-Quentin-sur-Indrois and Ferrière-sur-Beaulieu (limit of Loches National Forest), as in the west, where they form a band from commune headquarters to the municipal boundary with Chanceaux-près-Loches. The broad valley of the Indre offers a landscape of meadows, most of which are flooded during flood periods, bordered by groves of poplars to enhance area once covered in grass. The rest of the municipality, namely non-forested parts of the plateau adjoining the Indre Valley by wooded slopes, dedicated to agriculture, of an average fertility, except for the extreme north-western tip of the town, established in Champeigne "a locality there besides that name", with much more favorable agronomic characteristics.
Waterways
The municipality of Chambourg-sur-Indre is crossed from south-southeast to north-north-east by the Indre river which cut into the plateau a broad valley about wide. At the bottom of this valley, and due to its shallow slope, the Indre navigates many bends and oxbow lakes, even forming downstream of the urban core Chambourg-sur-Indre, two separate lakes enclosing an island. Indre is fed with a half-dozen streams originating on the plateau to the left side or in the forest of Loches for the right bank. Their courses are usually perpendicular to that of the Indre, including at their confluence. Floods of the Indre are of the flood plain type,Flood plain refer to when the level of a river, usually following heavy rainfall, rises slowly until inundation of the flood plain, for a longer or shorter period. threatening areas of the town built closer to the river.
The Indre is mentioned for the first time by Gregory of Tours in the 6th century under the name fluvium Angerem". This name is often attributed to a change in the Frankish language anger (prairie grass) from the root ang- or 'angr-.
Climate The geographical location of Chambourg-sur-Indre gives it a temperate ocean climate; The coast at Rochelle is away "as the crow flies". This type of climate, subject to prevailing westerly flow over the year is characterized by mild temperatures, the average monthly minimum is never below freezing, even in winter, while in summer it is common to have a heatwave for a few days. No month is truly dry, average monthly rainfall is always greater than .
Communication and transport
Air travel A 53 minutes road trip from Chambourg, the Tours Val de Loire Airport in 2014 offered regular services to Ajaccio, Figari, Toulouse, Dublin, London, Marrakesh and Porto; other destinations, seasonal or charter, are available.
Rail travel The people of Chambourg can go to Loches and Tours by train, using the TER Centre-Val de Loire line Tours-Loches, accessible by train from the Chambourg train station or by bus, which stops in the center of town according to schedules.Votre réseau de transport en région Centre-Val de Loire , TER Centre-Val de Loire, accessed 26 April 2022. Chambourg-sur-Indre offers a parking area for the carpooling, equipped with a charging point for electric vehicles.
Roads The main road through Chambourg-sur-Indre is the D943 (formerly N143) that crosses the plateau west of the Indre almost right on the marker separating Tours from Chambourg-sur-Indre; it then descends into the valley of the Indre to join Loches from Chambourg-sur-Indre; between Cormery and Chambourg-sur-Indre, is joined by D17 after the Indre valley on the left bank and directly serves the center of the town before joining the D943 at the southern end of the town center. It is also possible to go from Loches Chambourg using the D25 along the right bank of the Indre between the Island Thimée (Chambourg) and Corbery (Loches).
City planning
City changes
The urban center of Chambourg-sur-Indre is grouped around the pole formed by the church and the town hall from the intersection of the D94 (north-east south-east) and D17 (northwest southeast). The site overlooks by the left side of the Indre Valley flowing northeast, is immune to flooding. The town has expanded since 1980 as subdivisions are built along new roads, west and east of the town in recent projects, being established more directly in the bottom of the valley of the Indre. To the west of the town is business district. Once having crossed the series of three bridges that cross the D94 to the Indre valley towards the northeast and Chédigny we find Thimée Island, an important hamlet also benefiting from new construction, with the town center hanging somehow on the right bank of the Indre.
Several other villages, mostly located at the foot of the hill on the right bank of the Indre, are experiencing the same level of development. Part of the area situated on the plateau on the right bank of the Indre is much less populated, with the exception of "one-road town" built not far from the castle Marray on a promontory surrounded by the valleys of two parallel streams, tributaries of the left bank of the Indre.
Housing As of 2020, there were 647 houses in Chambourg-sur-Indre. Of these, 85% were primary residences, 6% were holiday homes, and 9% were vacant. 2.9% of the houses are in apartment buildings. 78% of the primary residences were owned by their occupants. 65% of the residents lived in the same house for more than 10 years.Logement en 2020, INSEE
Recent and future improvements In 2013, the municipality undertook the burial of electrical networks in many of its streets. On November 24, 2014, a new first response center of firefighters was dedicated.
At its meetings of May and June 2014, the City Council discussed several interesting development projects for urbanism and habitat, such as the construction of a car park and the redevelopment of a Street Chambourg-sur-Indre, preceded by burying electricity and telecommunications networks.
Major natural hazards On 28 April 2005, the prefecture of Indre-et-Loire adopted a plan to prevent flooding for all municipalities in the Indre department, which includes Chambourg-sur-Indre; accordingly, the land located in the Chambourg extreme flood hazard zone are unsuitable for. A prefectural order dated 29 April 2011 specifies the nature of natural hazards to which Chambourg-sur-Indre is subject; they are of two types: flooding due to an overflow of the Indre or flooding from storm water runoff. The same document details the decrees of acknowledgment of natural disasters made between 1983 and 2011 for the municipality of Chambourg-sur-Indre, two decrees for floods and mudslides (1983 and 1985), two decrees for landslides following a drought (1993 and 2005) and one decree for floods, mudslides and landslides (1999). This paper also indicates that Chambourg-sur-Indre is located in a low risk earthquake zone: level 2 on a scale of 1–5.
The risk of landslides after drought is due to the successive phases of shrinking and swelling clays could undermine the foundations of buildings. All of the plateau of Chambourg-sur-Indre, on both sides of the Indre, is subject to a "medium" or "strong" rating for this risk, while in the valley of the Indre, this risk is considered "lower" or "a priori", according to the scale defined by the (BRGM).
Name origin
The place name Chambourg appears for the first time in the founding charter of the abbey of Cormery from 791 as Condita Cambortensis. In the tenth century, villa Cambort was used, Chamborc in the ecclesiastical register of Tours from 1290 or Chambourt in a cartulary of chartreuse du Liget in 1304.
As shown in the older forms, it is kind Gallic name Cambo-ritu, based on two Celtic roots cambo- (curve, bend) and rito, ritu (ford), hence the overall sense of "stepping into the curve" or "ford of the meander". The etymology continued to change to, among others, Château de Chambord or Chambors (Oise).ibid Indeed, the element ritu- preceded by -o-, has led to a regular termination -or- written variously as -ort (for example Niort, Jort), -ors or -ord. Chambort was reinterpreted Cham-bourg (Cham-town) by analogy with the term bourg (village) in the Middle Ages.The current spelling appears in the Cassini map; the final name of the town, Chambourg-sur-Indre was fixed by the order of 23 August 1920, the complementary suffix 'sur-Indre' avoiding possible confusion elsewhere with the same name.
The names l'Île Thimée (Thimée Island) and l'Île Auger (Auger Island) refers to a time when these place names, were in the area of the Indre; this is no longer the case in modern times. According to written sources, both spellings "isle" (old spelling) or "île" (modern spelling) are used indiscriminately. In this article, the modern spelling is used.