Vendat lies in the Bourbonnais countryside west of Vichy, where a village centre gives way to hamlets, woodland, pasture and cultivated slopes. The commune describes its settlement as dispersed across both sides of the Béron valley. That geography is the key to a visit: the appeal is a rural landscape threaded by walking paths and traces of clay-working, rather than a single grand monument with an open interior. INSEE counted 2,292 municipal residents across the whole commune in 2023; this is not a headcount of the central streets. The same census series records average annual population growth of 0.6% between 2017 and 2023.
Walk the Béron valley
The official PR 49 route, “Aux sources du Rozet,” starts by Vendat’s church and forms an 8-kilometre loop. Vichy Communauté lists it as moderate, about 2 hours 15 minutes, free and available year-round. Its description says the walk is mostly gentle apart from the Béron valley, then passes through terraced cultivation, the Forêt des Souches and Lourdy, remembered as a village of potters. The mairie also publishes several other walking circuits, so check the exact route sheet rather than assuming every local path has the same length or profile. Download the current GPX, check weather and access conditions, and allow more time if the valley paths are wet.
A recorded craft landscape
Vendat’s municipal site highlights a past of potters and tile-makers. The evidence reaches further back than the craft label: the commune’s 2012 planning diagnostic lists recorded Palaeolithic stone tools at places including Vieux Vendat and Verbois, and Gallo-Roman pottery, tiles and workshop remains at Lourdy and Champoux. It also records settlement material at Le Bouchereaud and tile traces at La Tronchie. These are archaeological inventory entries, not displays; visitors should stay on public paths and not treat the find-spots as open sites.
A local-history transcription of Abbé Georges Malvielle’s 1909 monograph gives the scale of the later craft economy: it recalled 57 tileworks and six potters’ shops roughly a century earlier, while saying that only one tileworks remained when the account was written. The figure belongs to that historical account, not to present-day industry. Today’s Insee workplace figures are small: at the end of 2024 it counted 26 employer establishments, most in trade, transport and services, with construction the next largest category. That denominator does not describe all residents’ jobs or every farm and independent worker.
Church, hamlets and the old castle
The 2012 planning diagnostic describes medieval settlement groups at Lourdy, Champoux and Vieux Vendat. The municipality-hosted church booklet cites a written religious reference to Saint-Léger de Vendat in 1103 and a Mérimée inventory reference to “Ecclesia de Vendaco” in 1342. The present parish church, dedicated to Saint-Léger and Saint-Jean-Baptiste, was built in neo-Gothic style in 1879 to plans by Frédétat; it had no tower at first, and its concrete bell tower was added between 1953 and 1958. Near it, the municipal inventory dates the public monumental cross to the early 20th century and records the war memorial as completed in 1928.
The former château belongs to the documented history but is not a visitor interior. The planning diagnostic associates it with the lords of Vendat, records the Laqueuille family there in the 18th century and notes its sale as national property in 1793. Some fortifications were lost, the west salon was demolished in 1904 and the remains were later altered; the site is privately owned. For practical orientation, the mairie’s visitor point is at 3 rue des Landes and refers visitors to the Vichy tourist office. Insee’s 2025 equipment inventory records a grocery, bakery and pharmacy in the commune; opening times and availability can change, so check locally before relying on a service.
