The crown it never had
An oak spire over Kermaria-Sulard, Brittany.
Roofers watching the installation, seen from a café across the square, Kermaria-Sulard.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Joie was built in granite in the late nineteenth century. Funds ran short, and the square bell tower stood without its spire. Over time water worked into the structure, and the timber holding its bells began to fail.
Carpenters cut a new oak spire by hand in a workshop at Plestin-les-Grèves. On 11 June 2026, at ten in the morning, a crane raised it over the village and set it on the tower. A bouquet was fixed to its apex, the carpenters' topping-out custom.
The village and its council set this in motion, a commune of about a thousand, supported by the Fondation du patrimoine.
This timber craft, oak cut and shaped by hand, is still passed on in France, as the rebuilding of Notre-Dame de Paris made plain.
A tower completed after more than a century.
The restoration of Notre-Dame-de-la-Joie is still under way.
The commune's appeal: [Don clocher Kermaria-Sulard]