In 1246, Raymond 7th, the Count of Toulouse, ordered the building of the new town of Grand Castel. But to fully understand the political foundations, it is necessary to step back a few years:

• Our lord ELEONORE OF GUYENNE, heir of the sovereign Dukes of Gascony, had brought the whole of Aquitaine, including AGENAIS, as a dowry to her husband LOUIS 7th the Young.
• But after divorcing the prince, she married Henry PLANTAGENET, a lord of Anjou. In 1251, the latter became King of ENGLAND and from then on, we were ENGLISH.
• 45 years later, his son RICHARD the LION HEARTED married his sister JEANNE to the Count of TOULOUSE, and gave her Agenais as a dowry. By then, we had two lords: the Count of Toulouse, and his suzerain, the King of England. Richard the Lion Hearted was very popular in our area. He ordered the building of the first bridge in Agen as well the king’s castle, near the Basilica of Peyragude in PENNE d’AGENAIS.
• It was him, and not Philippe August, that our barons followed when they went on the 3rd crusade. And the "CORNIERES" (arcades typical of our bastides) around the market place, have been introduced in our area by the English.
  

The chosen spot was a primitive town, PUYMIROL, which became the borders of his new states.
Later on, Grand Castel and Puymirol, became one and the same town: bastide of Puymirol.


Etymologically, the name of Puymirol is made of “puy” which means mountain, promontory and “mirol” which comes from “mira” and “mirette” that is, to see.
PUYMIROL = mountain from where you can see far away.



Daily life during the Middle Age.

Raymond 7th’s architects had sacrificed the most elementary hygiene and comfort to defensive components.
The bastide was a check pattern, with small and narrow dirt streets, which became inaccessible cesspools in the wintertime. Well water was scarce and none too clean...
As in most towns of the South, every citizen used to consider the street bordering his house as his personal property, and therefore left out there any unwanted item.
From the very first day, the town was over-populated. There were not enough houses to accommodate all the people attracted by the franchises in the city of the counts.
With more and more people coming into town, and without the possibility to spread the bastide onto the glacis outside of the doors and stone walls, houses went up one storey, and were divided and parcelled out.
They were only miserable cob houses, sheltering two or three large families. Each one featured only two narrow rooms, one used as a hayloft, a barn or a woodshed, and the other, as a bedroom, a kitchen and a stable!

Most of the epidemics of plague which have devastated Puymirol were the direct result of the overcrowded conditions and the complete lack of hygiene (see the curse Crocotaco).