These purchases, made from local lords or other ecclesiastical establishments, enabled the estate to expand, but also to reduce the number of landlocked plots.

[12] The total surface area in 1248 is estimated, using a document called État général des terres de Vaulerent, at between 320 and 380 hectares.

It covers a single block of land 4.5 kilometers long from north to south and no more than 1.5-kilometer swide, located between the parishes of Survilliers, Louvres, Roissy, and Épiais.

The monks developed a strict three-field system for all their plots, resulting in very high yields per hectare for the time.

[15] At the beginning of the 14th century, the Parisis region was undergoing a serious agricultural crisis due to poor weather conditions, resulting in famine and a sharp rise in mortality.

According to Charles Higounet, these problems led to the decision in November 1315 to lease a part of the land to a certain Pierre Bove, living in Vémars, for nine years, with the buildings attached.

According to Georges Duby, the agricultural crisis needs to be put into perspective, and this decision is more closely linked to a general trend at this time, among ecclesiastical and seigniorial farms, to cease direct exploitation and favor leasing.

In 1375, a new barn was leased to the north of the estate, on the land of Le Guépelle (now part of the commune of Saint-Witz), covering an area of 79 hectares.

[20] The marked honorability of these farmers is reflected in their burials: the Bruslé family was one of the first to obtain the privilege of being buried directly in the parish church.

The church of Saint-Germain de Villeron still houses a number of their tombstones, including that of Jehan Bruslé, dating from 1561, that of Anthoine Guérin, who died in 1612 and is depicted full-length on his slab, and that of his wife.

[21] At the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the economic crisis that devastated the kingdom also affected the wealthy farmers of Vaulerent.

Land yields fell sharply, due in part to poor weather conditions linked to the peak of the Little Ice Age.

In 1696, Louis Le Febvre's last lease ended, and the property was taken over by the family of Jean Navarre, who were settled in the Villeroy region, near Meaux.

[26] In 1758, according to the post-death inventory of Prévost's wife, the farm covered 220 hectares and cost 7,900 pounds in cash, 98 hectoliters of oats, and 367 quintals of sheaves of straw.

At the same time, he bought another Chaalis barn for sale, Choisy-aux-Bœufs, as well as a farm in Longperrier, making a total of 643 hectares of some of the finest land in the Île-de-France region, for 1,312,000 pounds.

After his assassination two years later, the estate remained in the hands of his daughter, Suzanne Le Peletier de Mortefontaine, until 1829.

[28] In August 1841, she sold the estate to Marie Louise Pelline von Dalberg in exchange for a private mansion in Paris, plus a payment of 120,000 francs.

[31] In 1903, Laurent Lecerf and his son Émile built a distillery at the entrance to the farm, complete with beet sheds and storage channels.

The wall included an extension to the north and east, still visible on the land register at the beginning of the 19th century, enclosing a former orchard and vegetable garden.

[40] The northeast gable wall, reinforced by three buttresses, was blind until the addition of a door topped by a wooden lintel in the late modern era.

This roof, which is not original as can be seen from the windows protruding from the gable end, was probably rebuilt after 1446, the date on which a text describes the ruined barn.

[40] Inside, the series of arches is supported by twelve square-based pillars with canted corners, each measuring one meter on a side.

At the same time, the main building directly above would have occupied the same floor space as the cellars but disappeared during the Hundred Years' War.

Only the nearby Archéa Archaeological Museum, which presents a model of the building in its medieval state, offers guided tours on an occasional basis.

He made a deal with the devil: he promised to give him his daughter in exchange for completing the barn roof before the end of the night marked by the crowing of the rooster.

As the work progressed rapidly through the night, the farmer's wife, fearing for her daughter, went to the henhouse to wake the rooster, who crowed before daybreak.

Indeed, Abbé Lebeuf, in his Histoire du diocèse de Paris (1745): "[In Vaulaurent], people have invented fables about the quarré of the barn roof, which remains unfinished and exposes the underside to the insults of the air: but connoisseurs know the physical reason for leaving this quarry near the door uncovered and without tiles; namely, to counter the wind which, blowing impetuously through the large door, harms the sheaf heap".

The plot of this tale can be found in other Monastic barns, probably because of their imposing size, to the point of giving them a mythical or superhuman origin.

This is the recurring theme of the "duped devil" who is asked to construct a building (bridge or castle), as listed in the Aarne-Thompson classification (AT1005).

[58] The building was also of interest to the American art historian Walter Horn (1908–1995) and his architect collaborator Ernest Born, from the University of California at Berkeley, who came in the 1960s to carry out precise surveys and reconstructions of the building in its original state, as part of a wider study of late medieval carpentry in Western Europe.