Les Clayes-sous-Bois (French pronunciation: [le klɛ su bwa] ⓘ) is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.

Les Clayes-sous-Bois, like most towns in the Île-de-France region, has a large number of businesses (619), mainly in commerce and services, located in five industrial and commercial zones.

After being part of the group of communes of the West Paris region, Les Clayes-sous-Bois became part of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines agglomeration community on 1 January 2016 The twinning with Röthenbach was established by the mayors André Boulay and Karl Fischer in 1964, one year after the signature of the "Élysée Treaty", a friendship treaty signed at the Élysée Palace by the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the French president Charles de Gaulle.The group of "the Friends of the Woods" already existed since 1962, it organized meetings between the young people of the two cities.

As its name indicates, this secondary road was used for cattle transport from Normandy; the animals were then inspected in Chavenay and put on sale at the Poissy and Saint-Germain-en-Laye markets .

In the Middle Ages, the partition of the territory of the old Roman Empire began, giving rise to fiefdoms ruled by lords; in exchange for the protection of the latter, the peasants could cultivate their lands in security.

Excavations carried out in 1875 during the construction of the enclosing wall of the Saint-Martin cemetery revealed a forgotten cellar that belonged to the castle.

In 1357, the troops of the King of Navarre, Charles le Mauvais, settled for three months in the villages of Les Clayes, Villepreux and Trappes, plundering the parishes.

In 1360, the king's squire Pierre Potel had a seigniorial hotel built in the south of the village : a hunting lodge near the Bois d'Arcy forest.

This hotel was built in the Val Gally area, on the site of a country house belonging to the nuns of Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Saint-Cyr, which was burned down during the occupation of Charles le Mauvais.

The seigniorial mansion was a square surrounded by a double enclosure, a defensive wall and ditches which remained until 1866, when they were filled in by Mr. Martignon.

The domain passed on to his daughter Françoise de Brézé, who sold it to François Coignet, notary and secretary to the seigneur of Pontchartrain.

A trace remains above a door of the main body of the former hunting relay: it is a «safeguard», a plate representing a shield or  a blazon, on which are engraved three lilies surrounded by a necklace of the Saint-Laurent Michel  order with a crown sit on top it .

On 20 November 1791 the parish priest Le Duc was relieved of his duties as mayor and replaced by Nicolas Barré, prosecutor of the town .

Made of stone and brick, the building's façade is rectangular, framed by two circular towers and roofs pierced by four bull's eyes windows.

Divorced from Maximilian von Jaunez, she began the restoration of the castle of Clayes, however she sold it after her remarriage in 1925 with Charles de Polignac.In 1926, Lucy and Jos Hessel, paintings traders, acquired the castle and starting a high social life, inviting personalities like the writer Tristan Bernard, the painter Édouard Vuillard and the politician Léon Blum Until the beginning of the 20th century, Les Clayes was a small rural village of barely 300 inhabitants.

The "ferme du château" (castle farm) was located at the corner of rue Henri-Langlois and rue Henri-Prou, where a period courtyard can still be found todayRue Henri-Prou, then called "chemin de Grande communication" and linking Les Clayes to Versailles and Neauphles (towns with which most of the commune's agricultural trade took place), was the main axis of the village, where communal life took place, with the church and the first town hall in its center, located in the former presbytery.

Between the 1870s and the 1930s, the industrialization of the region, the demographic growth and the densification of the means of transportation also led to the multiplication of the construction of small houses overflowing the historical center, bringing to Les Clayes a new population, well-to-do and then working class, prefiguring what would be called the suburbs.

During the Second World War, a group of young Cletiens Resistance fighter from the" Organisation Civile et Militaire (OCM)" were engaged against the German occupation.

It has several Romanesque elements such as small round bay windows and a narrow, low limestone nave, as well as a vault with arches, but it has only one side aisle, whereas churches usually have a second one.

The church was dedicated to Saint Martin during the reign of Henri III.In the 16th century, a wooden cartouche carved with the Roman numeral "1500" ("MC") was placed above the door of the sacristy.

The hunting lodge from the 14th century was built on the ruins of a house destroyed during a troubled period (Hundred Years' War, Black Death).

This house belonged to the nuns of Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Saint-Cyr (Benedictine order), who sold the remains of the building to the king's squire Pierre Potel, in 1360 .

It currently houses the municipal library The presbytery located in front of the church was built between 1719 and 1745 at the request of the parish priest of Les Clayes, Jean-Louis Lauzy, and at his own expense, in order to provide a classroom for the children of the village.

Its name refers to the king's mistress Diane de Poitiers who lived in the hunting lodge of les Clayes.