Cadalen Town Hall and the local population have supported us since the association was founded. Our head office is located here.
History tells us that Cadalen was built around a church: Notre Dame du Saule.
And legend has it that a very beautiful, very noble and very pure young girl left her family and gave up the pleasures of the world for the love of God.
The young girl came to pray and meditate at the top of a hill, the mamelon of Cadalen at a place called Capdelong, beside a sacred pond surrounded by old willows.
The young girl had taken up residence in one of them, a niche that could have been used as a bedroom having been hollowed out of the trunk over time.
When the ‘Virgin of the Willow’ died, her body was buried in the hollow trunk of a willow tree, where people would kneel to pray or meditate, and miracles were performed in front of this unusual burial site.
To thank the Lord for these miracles, the Count of the region had a church built in this blessed spot. Notre Dame du Saule was born.
People came here to seek the Virgin’s protection for young mothers, for children’s illnesses, for mothers wanting to read milk…
It is said that in the attics of the oldest Cadalennois, it is still possible to find documents relating to this devotion, perhaps even in the langue d’Oc…What remains of it today :
The construction of a new church in Cadalen at the end of the 19th century led to the abandonment of the former Notre-Dame du Saule church, which had become too small. The porch was then converted into a school and the nave into the town hall. It was listed as a Historic Monument in 1927, thanks to the quality of the sculptures on its Romanesque south portal. In 1951, when its bell tower collapsed, the vaults and south wall of the church were swept away, leaving only the porch and its beautiful portal intact.