Charmes-en-l'Angle

Location

Charmes-en-l'Angle lies in the Haute-Marne département in the Grand Est region, on the upper course of the Blaiseron, about 33 kilometres north of Chaumont. The commune belongs to the canton of Joinville and the arrondissement of Saint-Dizier. With only six inhabitants (as of 2023), it is the most sparsely populated commune in the historic region of Champagne-Ardenne. Statisticians classify it as a rural commune with very scattered housing, outside any urban area. In 2017 only eleven registered voters appeared on the electoral rolls.

Forest, water and climate

If you are looking for rows of vines here, you will not find them in the sources. Land use breaks down like this:

• Forests and semi-natural areas: 78.8 per cent
• Arable land: 16.9 per cent
• Meadows: 4.3 per cent

The Blaiseron, 20 kilometres long, rises in Ambonville and flows into the Blaise at Courcelles-sur-Blaise after passing through eight communes. There is also a small pond of 0.4 hectares. The climate is temperate with fresh summers. The nearest Météo-France weather station, at Blécourt six kilometres away, records an annual mean of 10.8 °C and around 880 millimetres of rainfall for 1991 to 2020. The extremes: 40.2 °C on 25 July 2019 and minus 18 °C on 20 December 2009.

“With only six inhabitants (as of 2023), it is the most sparsely populated commune in the historic region of Champagne-Ardenne.

Name and history

The village name has been documented since the Middle Ages, appearing early as Carma (854) and later as Chalma in Angulo (1208). It derives from a pre-Celtic word for fallow land. The addition «en l'Angle» means «in the corner» and describes the position at the bend where the Blaiseron meets another small stream. Charmes-en-l'Angle and Charmes-la-Grande originally formed a single village. In 1763 the two parishes are recorded separately as Grande and Petite Charmes.

Taittinger Champagner

What to see

The village has a parish church and a château, the Château de Charme, which has been protected as a Monument historique since 1934. The sources name no further sights, which suits a place of this size.

A note for champagne lovers

Charmes-en-l'Angle is neither grand cru nor premier cru, and the sources available to me mention neither viticulture nor champagne houses. The village shows another side of Champagne: the historic region also takes in wide stretches of forest, fields and river valleys that have little in common with the famous vine slopes around Reims, Épernay or the Côte des Blancs. Anyone travelling through the Haute-Marne will find a quiet corner where you can lift your eyes from the glass and look again at the land from which Champagne as a whole is made.