[citation needed] In 883, when the Normans sacked the abbey at Saint-Quentin, the king Carloman II of France, set up his camp at Laviers to block their passage to the sea.

[5] In the 11th century, a fort comprising a palisade on a motte was built at Laviers, near the Bois de Bonance, on a point jutting out towards the bay.

In 1177, Jean de Ponthieu gave money to the leper hospital of the frères du Val and the gift of a forest was noted.

In 1777, after a branch of the Somme was blocked at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, the authorities decided to build a canal from Abbeville to the estuary at Saint Valery.

Work began in 1786 but hit problems in 1793 with the installation of the sluice-gates in the muddy sub-strata and above all, the reaction of the local farmers, raising sheep and cattle on the salt-marshes.