Medard

Medard (ˈmeːdaʀt) is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein. The municipality lies on the river Glan in the Western Palatinate at an elevation of some 160 m above sea level, mainly on the river's left bank for a stretch of about a kilometre towards the northeast. The elevations around the village reach heights of roughly 300 m above sea level (Ohlbachskopf 316 m, Marialskopf 290 m). The municipal area measures 599 ha, of which roughly 25 ha is settled and 138 ha is wooded. The village is surrounded by slopes with meadow orchards. From Medard, outings for hikers and canoeists are possible. Medard borders in the north on the municipality of Breitenheim, in the east on the municipality of Odenbach, in the southeast on the municipality of Cronenberg, in the southwest and west on the town of Lauterecken, in the west on an exclave belonging to the municipality of Grumbach and in the northwest on the municipality of Kappeln. Also belonging to Medard is the outlying homestead of Bärenhof. Most of Medard's houses are found standing either side of the through road, Bundesstraße 420, branching off which are smaller sidestreets. The most important of these branching off to the south are a street leading to the former railway station and another leading to the former mill. In the area around the mill, nowadays known as Medardusquelle (“Saint Medardus’s Spring”), a bridge crosses the river Glan, which leads to the few houses that stand on the river's right bank, and also to the sporting ground and to lands used for agriculture and forestry. Here on the right bank, two shaft kilns for making quicklime, in operation between 1820 and 1900, are preserved. The pretty old village church in the middle of the graveyard, the former school and the former Roman archaeological dig sites lie at the ends of the sidestreets that branch off the through road to the north.