Orry-la-Ville

Orry-la-Ville–Coye station has rail connections to Amiens, Creil, Compiègne and Paris (at Gare du Nord).

• Name — Orry-la-Ville • Commune Status — Commune • Arrondissement — Senlis • Canton — Senlis • Insee — 60482 • Postal Code — 60560 • Mayor — Nathanael Rosenfeld • Term — 2020–2026 • Intercommunality — CC de l'Aire Cantilienne • Demonym — Orrygeois • Elevation M — 95 • Elevation Min M — 42 • Elevation Max M — 129 • Area Km2 — 12.1 • Website — https: www.orrylaville.fr

The commune's name is a Gallo-Roman formation using the suffix -acum ("estate of"). The earliest recorded forms are Orri/Aury/Oiri (1057) and the Latinized Oriacum (1071), followed by Auriacum (1140), Oyriacum (1182), Orriacum (1220) and Oryacum (1299). The qualifier "-la-Ville" distinguished the village proper from a separate seigneurial "château d'Orry"; the compound form is first attested in 1293, as "Orium-ville."

The site has Gallo-Roman origins, traditionally linked to the sandstone quarried nearby at the hamlet of Montgrésin. The earliest documentary mention of the village is a charter of 1097 recording a gift of shares in its mill. After the accession of Hugh Capet in 987, the county of Senlis entered the royal domain, and the surrounding lands were subsequently divided in part among the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis, the chapter of Notre-Dame de Senlis, and the family of Gonesse-Montgrésin; the monks of Chaalis held fishponds nearby, today's Étangs de Commelle. Orry is considered one of the oldest parishes of the former diocese of Senlis. The neighbouring settlement of Géni was depopulated in the first half of the 13th century and its parish merged into Orry's in 1246, while La Chapelle-en-Serval, previously a dependency of Orry, was established as a separate parish. As with the great majority of French communes, Orry-la-Ville was constituted as a modern municipal commune during the French Revolution.

Orry-la-Ville covers 12.1 km 2 on the southern edge of the Forest of Chantilly, which occupies roughly half the commune's territory. Elevations within the commune range from 42 to 129 m. The main watercourse is the river Thève. On the boundary with Coye-la-Forêt lie the Étangs de Commelle, four ponds created around 1204–1208 by the monks of Chaalis as fishponds, overlooked by the Château de la Reine Blanche on the Coye-la-Forêt side of the boundary. Neighbouring communes include Coye-la-Forêt, La Chapelle-en-Serval and Pontarmé; Chantilly lies about 5 km to the north. The commune includes the hamlet of Montgrésin.

• Illustration — The Château de la Borne-Blanche The church of Notre-Dame (place de l'Abbé-Clin) dates in its earliest fabric to around 1160–1170 and is considered a notable witness to the architectural transition from Romanesque to Gothic styles, its choir showing the influence of Senlis Cathedral; the bell tower dates from the early 13th century, and a large side chapel was added in the 16th century. It was listed (inscrit) as a monument historique by decree of 21 May 1970. A second listed structure on the commune's territory, the Four de la Grange (a "lantern of the dead," in the Forest of Chantilly), was classified by order of 18 April 1914. A château known as the Château de la Borne-Blanche stands near the hamlet and station of the same name, within the commune.

• Illustration — The Nederlands Ereveld (Dutch Field of Honour) Orry-la-Ville is the site of the Nederlands Ereveld ("Dutch Field of Honour"), a stand-alone Dutch military cemetery beside the D1017 road, inaugurated on 3 May 1958. It holds 114 graves of Dutch nationals who died in France during the Second World War, and its memorial wall additionally commemorates 108 further Dutch war dead who could not be buried there, including servicemen killed in the bombing of the transport ship Pavon off Dunkirk on 20 May 1940, resistance fighters who died in France, and soldiers of the Princess Irene Brigade killed during the 1944 liberation of northern France. The cemetery's central feature is a two-metre bronze sculpture, De Vallende Man ("The Falling Man"), by the Rotterdam sculptor Cor van Kralingen. A commemoration ceremony is held at the cemetery each year around 4 May, the Dutch remembrance day.

• Illustration — Orry-la-Ville–Coye station The commune is served by Orry-la-Ville–Coye station, on the Paris–Lille railway. The direct Saint-Denis–Creil line via Survilliers-Fosses opened on 10 May 1859; it was quadrupled as far as the La Chapelle-en-Serval junction, 4 km south of the station, on 15 April 1905, and after the line's electrification in December 1958, the remaining four kilometres of track up to the station itself were quadrupled in May 1962. It is the terminus of one branch of the RER D and is also served by TER Hauts-de-France trains, with a direct journey to Gare du Nord of about 18–20 minutes. A second, RER-only stop, La Borne Blanche, also lies within the commune. Orry-la-Ville is close to a junction of the A1 autoroute, roughly 35 km from Paris and 15 km from Roissy–Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Orry-la-Ville has been twinned with Kapelle, in the Netherlands, under a formal agreement signed on 14 December 2024. Both communes host a war cemetery for the other's nationals: Orry-la-Ville the Dutch Field of Honour described above, and Kapelle a French military cemetery for troops who fell defending the Netherlands in May 1940.

• Henri Delaunay, an aviator born in the hamlet of Montgrésin (not to be confused with the football administrator of the same name), was a Latécoère pilot who, in 1928, safely brought down a burning aircraft in Brazil, saving his mechanic and two passengers. • Rémy Belvaux (1966–2006), Belgian film director, screenwriter and actor, co-director of Man Bites Dog, died in Orry-la-Ville.

• Illustration — Former town hall-school in Orry-la-Ville • Illustration — Dutch honorary cemetery in Orry-la-Ville