Baron-sur-Odon was inhabited before Jesus Christ. The many Gallo-Roman remains indeed attest to an organized human occupation on the municipal territory.
The town is bordered by a major Roman road linking Cotentin to Orléanais passing through Vieux, city of Viducasses. This Roman road is known under the name of Chemin Haussée, between Bruyère and Croix des Filandriers at the level of Hill 112. This path is also known as Chemin Guillaume, in memory of the Duke of Normandy, who left Falaise and who would have borrowed it by having his horses shoeed upside down to deceive his pursuers. This stratagem would explain the origin of the name given to the Cross of the Filandriers which would recall the cunning of William the Conqueror "spinning behind".
The first mentions of Baron go back to the beginning of the 12th century; it is a name of Gallic origin, it is composed of the suffix on, or num, characterizing the rivers, preceded by the root bar, Gallic root meaning height. Which would give Baron the meaning of "height of the river".
Baron belonged to the Abbey of Ardennes at the beginning of the 12th century. The oldest parts of the church date back to this period.
After having belonged until the beginning of the 14th century to the Le Gouvix family, Baron then came under the family of Villers, Anzenay and Moges. Thus Jean de Moges built the first Château du Ponchet in the 16th century.
The town experienced the plague in the Middle Ages, three times, sowing ruin and desolation, causing, it seems, the displacement of part of the village towards the North-East, moving it away so the church.
After the Revolution, in 1792, the municipality shared its land with the inhabitants. Bruyère was divided into 473 lots and cut into 11 delles: Delle de Liberté, Delle de l'Egalité, Delle des Victoires, appellations that can be found today.
In the 19th century, there were around 400 inhabitants in Baron; agricultural activity dominated but five businesses also animated the village.
In the second half of the 19th century, the foundations for the construction of a town hall and a school were laid.
During the War of 14-18, thirteen young Baron were killed. The town then experienced its demographic minimum with 193 inhabitants following a beginning of rural exodus which depopulated the countryside.
Between the two wars, the municipality acquired a telephone and built the electricity network, the preamble to a modernization policy.
The Second World War threw Baron into the heart of the fighting which followed the landing in June 1944. From the end of June to the beginning of August, Baron-sur-Odon was going to experience a deluge of fire because the German high command had decided to block the advance of the troops allied to Hill 112. The town was permanently marked by this terrible battle, which destroyed two thirds of the village and many years were needed to erase the stigmata.
Then, communal life resumed its course and from the 1970s, Baron-sur-Odon won back inhabitants, from 200 at the end of the 1960s to nearly 900 today by building numerous pavilions.
