To begin with, let’s take a look at the little house that houses the ticket office. This modest but attractive building is a former day labourer’s cottage. You can still admire the Renaissance-style window on the first floor, which has retained its original sill bearing the date 1616. Above, the attic opens onto a gallery enclosed by a balustrade made of turned wooden balusters. This cottage, which combines stone construction and half-timbering, once belonged to a farm labourer. The family lived on the first floor, where the kitchen and living room were located. The attic was used to store grain and fruit. The cellar and stable were on the ground floor. The day labourer’s house is a scale model of the type of dwelling that makes the village of Albé so special. The farmer’s house with adjoining stable and cellar. You can admire some magnificent examples in the street alongside the ERLENBACH, but you won’t see them in any other village in Alsace or elsewhere.
Opposite the day labourer’s house stands the massive Maison du Val de Villé building. This former farm, which was in operation until around fifteen years ago, is typical of the Vosges-style farmhouses that became widespread in the Val de Villé during the reconstruction that followed the Thirty Years’ War in the early 18th century. The dwelling is at the front of the building, on the Place du Tilleul side. It is followed by the part of the house used for farming. These include the barn, stable and shed. The cellar was built under the dwelling.
The archway key over the entrance door reproduces professional symbols in a Germanic-style shield. A shingle knife, two cooper’s davits in saltire and a cooper’s mallet. On either side of the shield are the year 1709, the year the cellar was built, and the initials of the builders, AVDS and SM, which stand successively for Augustin VON DER SCHEER and his wife Suzanna MEYBLUM. The lintel above the entrance door to the dwelling is also decorated with a date and initials. It shows the year 1721 and the initials of Augustin VON DER SCHEER’s name. The letters, S.A.M.B.I., are taken from the name of his wife, Suzanna MEYBLUMIN. At the time, women’s surnames in Alsace were marked with the feminine “in”.
Note the discrepancy between the year of construction of the dwelling and that of the cellar.
Next to the entrance to the potato cellar (mine gallery) is a cooling vat for a still, engraved with the year “1759” and the initials FIVDS (François Ignace VONDERSHEER, one of the brothers of Augustin VONDERSHEER, the builder of the Maison de Pays).