Le patrimoine des Soieries Bonnet (Jujurieux, Ain) : conserver et valoriser in situ un ensemble unique de l’industrie textile

The Bonnet Silk Mills site and collections form an indivisible industrial heritage of a rare coherence: the granting of heritage status to the entire site, with its uninterrupted industrial history, is sufficiently rare to deserve highlighting. It's also an example of the preservation, in its entirety, of a coherent textile industrial complex where all the parts of the industrial heritage, both tangible and intangible. The company closed down at the end of 2001 after 200 years of existence. A few days after its closure, the Ain general council acquired the company's assets. Its collections, with its rare uninterrupted history, were safeguarded in its entirety. They are conserved in situ and presented to the public in the mill and original blacksmith's shop, which belong to the Rives de l'Ain-Pays du Cerdon community of communes and are protected as historical monuments since 2003, given their representativeness of the industrial and social history of the silk industry in Lyon and the surrounding region in the XIXth and XXth centuries. The interlinked conservation of the buildings and collections nevertheless relies on the combined efforts of the public authorities in the absence of specific regulations enabling the protection of a building and its collections