Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray 5.32

Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France.HistoryEvidence of ancient habitation has been found on and around the site of modern-day Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray including Neolithic tools (dated to 2000 years BC) as well as signs of Gallo-Roman settlements (200–300 years AD).A hamlet called Sancti Stephani and dependent on the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille was reported in the ninth century in a royal charter. The village then developed along the road connecting Paris to Rouen. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the parish had five hundred inhabitants. The population grew, benefiting from arable land near the river, as well as rich forests, moors and grasslands.During the Revolution, in 1790, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray was constituted as a political administration. The town began to take its urban and industrial character from the mid-nineteenth century with the beginning of the industrial revolution and the arrival of the railway.The first steam trains of Western Railway Company between Paris and Rouen began service in 1843, increasing the attractiveness of the town for industry. The 1860s saw the establishment of a large cotton factory creating hundreds of jobs, and led to the expansion of the town to accommodate its expanding workforce.In the early twentieth century, the opening of the railway workshops of Quatre-Mares (1913), the arrival of Camille Cavallier's Fonderie Lorraine in 1916 and the Stationery Chapel (1928) reinforced the industrial character of the city.