Soulgé sur Ouette, a bit of history

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Two main roads cross in the town.
The passage of large cars and the presence of a post office supplied commerce.
There was a weaving industry and lime kilns which are now destroyed.

Some castelains, whose families have now disappeared, resided in the commune.
A document of 1637 mentions the nobility of Soulgé-Le-Bruant
Earth lords:
Sir Galoys d’Aché and Lady Renée du Bellay…
Messire Charles d’Aché, Baron de Loré…
Messire Guy de Vallory and Anne de Goué, Lords of La Motte and nobles
Loys, Brandelis and Charles Devaloys, Lords of the Pommeraie, the Chair, the Motte
Miss Julienne and Gabrielle, their children.
Demoiselles Marguerite and Françoise Vallory, from Chantepie et du Parc, sister of Messire de Vallory.

In 1640, a contagious disease wreaked great havoc among the inhabitants of Soulgé-Le-Bruant. It killed nearly a quarter of the population. And a hundred years later, in 1740, the priest of the time wrote that such a great famine had been raging for two years that the inhabitants were eating cabbages and eating them up to their trunks.

At the time of the Revolution, the Lord of the Motte-Valory, a descendant of the Park family, who did not want to submit to the laws of the government, went abroad and his property was sold.

During the War of 1870, Soulgé-Le-Bruant and Nuillé-sur-Ouette were not too badly ransacked by the Prussians (who stopped at the gates of Laval). In several houses, they demanded cognac. The peasants had hidden what they had precious.
In 1877, a post office was set up in Soulgé-Le-Bruant, the telegraph in 1884. The mail was important, it was mainly addressed to the notary’s office, to a local businessman who employed nearly one hundred workers, to a wholesale wine market in the commune, and to the lawyer Maitre Lesage, who officiated at the Court of Cassation and the Conseil d’Etat but stayed for three months of the year in Soulgé-Le-Bruant.

The church dates from 1879, it is of Gothic architecture, sober ornament. Seven stained glass windows form the choir, the one at the back of the apse represents the patron saint of the town: Saint Médard, with Saint Louis. On the sides are scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin: the Annunciation and the presentation of Mary in the Temple with her parents Saint Joachin and Saint Anne.

The wash house of Saint Médard is well worth a little detour. This fountain has never run out of water. It is in the lower part of the village.

In 1973, Soulgé-Le-Bruant and Nuillé-sur-Ouette merged and gave way to a single village, Soulgé-Sur-Ouette.