1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pont Audemer

PONT AUDEMER, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Eure, 39 m. N.W. of Evreux, on the Risle, a left-bank affluent of the Seine, and on the railway from Evreux to Honfleur. Pop. (1906), 5700. The church of St Ouen, which has fine stained glass of the 16th century, combines the late Gothic and Renaissance styles; its choir is Romanesque. Local institutions are the sub-prefecture, a tribunal of first instance, a board of trade-arbitration, a chamber and tribunal of commerce. Manufacturing industry is active, and includes the founding of malleable metal, a spur factory, the manufacture of glue and paper, cotton-spinning and various branches of leather manufacture. There is trade in iiax, wool, grain, cattle, cider, paper, iron, wood and coal. The port has a length of over half a mile on the Risle, which is navigable for small vessels from this point to its mouth (10 m.). The town owes its name to Audomar, a Frank lord, who in the 7th or 8th century built a bridge over the Risle at this point. It was the scene of several provincial ecclesiastical councils in the 12th and 13th centuries and of meetings of the estates of Normandy in the 13th century.