Maison de la Mère Pourcel, Historical house in Place des Merciers, Dinan, France.
Maison de la Mère Pourcel stands at 3 Place des Merciers, its upper facade a blue-grey timber frame filled with pale plaster panels and rows of small rectangular windows. A steep grey slate roof rises to a small dormer, and a grey stone section with a large multi-paned window adjoins the right side. The ground floor holds a blue-painted shopfront with glazed doors.
The house was built in 1458 and expanded in the early 1700s before receiving official protection as a classified monument in 1961. This recognition reflected its importance as one of Dinan's oldest surviving structures.
The house belonged to the city and was fitted out as a restaurant before the fire. Its name recalls Mère Pourcel, a figure associated with the house in local memory. The building stood on Place des Merciers, a square named for the mercers, the cloth merchants who traded there.
The house stands at 3 Place des Merciers, on the paved square in Dinan's old centre, where bollards and closed parasols mark the spot. After the 22–23 June 2019 fire, clearance began on 25 June to recover and secure the surviving architectural elements. The town owns the building and plans reconstruction with the support of the Brittany region and a funding appeal through the Fondation du patrimoine.
Dendrochronology dated the oak framing to 1458, making it one of Dinan's oldest houses; the northern extension used timber felled between late 1703 and early 1704. The fire of 22–23 June 2019, detected by an alarm around 4 a.m., brought 84 firefighters and injured one of them.
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