May 23rd, 1134, a group of monks of the community of the abbey of Clairvaux with at his head the English Henri de Murdach (Henry Murdac), took possession of this new Cistercian abbey, the fifteenth girl of Clairvaux.
Located in a valley directed of is in west, holy Bernard gave him the name of Vauclair (Vallis will clara), reversed name of the abbey mother (Clara vallis). Helped by the gifts of rich families, the abbey thrived quickly while obtaining many grounds and farms.
In 1142, on the initiative of saint Bernard and Hatton, bishop of Troyes, the Notre-Dame abbey of the Recluse, north of Sézanne, was put under the supervision of Vauclair. In 1167, at the request of Henri the 1st Liberal, Count Palatine of Champagne, the abbey of Vauclair gave rise to the Notre-Dame abbey of Charmoye not far from Épernay.
The One hundred Year old war and the leagues of the 16th century did much evil at the community which succeeds in all the same surviving until the French revolution of 1789 when it was definitively dismantled, and sold like “national good”.
Its geographical location in the vicinity immediate of the Path of the Ladies led to the almost total destruction of the buildings in 1917 pennies fires direct of artillery. There remain only vestiges today
Following fouilles1 undertaken in 1966 by an local association under the control of a young Belgian Jesuit, the father Rene Courtois - in love with the abbey which lived there of 1966 with its death in 2005 - the site is classified historic building in 1970. The whole of the current vestiges remains however majestic when one represents the size of the destroyed buildings. With the ruins, one can see there a arboretum made up mainly of apple trees and pear trees of yesteryear, and a garden of medicinal herbs conceived by the Courtois father and inaugurated in 1976.

 

Wikipedia source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbaye_de_Vauclair