Urville-Nacqueville

Urville-Nacqueville is a former commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France. It was created on 1 January 1964 by the merger of two neighbouring communes, Urville-Hague to the west and Nacqueville to the east, and on 1 January 2017 was itself absorbed into the new commune of La Hague, within which it holds the status of commune déléguée. Its inhabitants are known as Urvillo-Nacquevillais, and the commune had 1,948 inhabitants in 2022. The commune lies on the north coast of the Cotentin peninsula at the entrance to La Hague. It combines a long sandy beach, a bathing and windsurfing resort since the early 20th century, with an inland farming hinterland of scattered hamlets, and is backed to the south by a wooded slope rising to the schist plateau of La Hague. Its foreshore holds a notable Iron Age cross-Channel trading settlement, one of the most important protohistoric coastal sites in Normandy, and its beach saw the British landing that opened the 1758 raid on Cherbourg. The two former villages preserve a 16th-century château and a 14th-century manor, both listed monuments, while a single modern parish church replaced the two medieval churches destroyed in 1944.