Also here, William the Conqueror received the news that the barons of Cotentin and Bessin were conspiring to kill him, enabling him to escape to Falaise.

Of the friaries of the Capuchin and Conventual friars and the abbey of Benedictine nuns, which existed in Valognes prior to 1792, only the latter remains and was transformed into the hospice of the Rue des Religieuses.

Before the French Revolution, Valognes was the residence of more than a hundred families of distinguished birth and fortune, and was for a long time afterwards the home, en villégiature, of many of the old noblesse.

The 1928 Methuen guide book to Normandy by Cyril Scudamore rather more prosaically describes Valognes as "a clean and well-built town, whose fine old houses bear witness to its former prosperity".

Little remains of Valognes's famous architectural heritage, as many of the aristocratic mansions were reduced to rubble during the battle of Normandy.