version
française
EAST
OF
BRITTANY:
click
on this image to enlarge
SOME
MEGALITHS
OF
WESTERN FRANCE
A 16th century sketch of the Pierre Levée,
Poitiers
A 19th century drawing of
the Gallery-tomb
in situ at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Oise)
text and photographs by
Anthony
Weir
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Dolmen of the type known in
French as Dolmen Simple at Crocq (Creuse)
(The
word dolmen
is an 18th century antiquarian term which is Frenchified fake-Breton
for 'stone table'; likewise the word menhir
is supposed to mean 'long stone' , but the actual Breton is
peulvan
or 'stone pillar'.)
Beyond the well-tramped and sometimes overrun sites of Brittany,
the megaliths of France are little known and little visited.
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Dolmen moved to the churchyard
of Confolens (Charente)
Whereas
France is well-supplied with comprehensive and widely-available
guides to Romanesque churches, there are none (in English) for
the thousands of prehistoric tombs and menhirs outside Brittany.
In Britain
it is the other way round.
The
megalith-hunter in France must resort to the random marking
of megaliths by a p
on Michelin maps,
detail
of a Michelin map
showing some of the dolmens on page 3
to
the equally random mentions in tourist pamphlets,
to the occasional battered or home-made sign labelled "Dolmen",
or to books long out of print, such as Glyn Daniel's THE
PREHISTORIC CHAMBER TOMBS OF FRANCE (London,
1960) which I initially relied on. However, in the départements
of Lot and Aveyron at least, many dolmens are well and elegantly
signposted - as megalithic consciousness has risen.
The IGN (Ordnance Survey) 1:100,000 Série Verte is reasonably
good for prehistoric monuments, tending not to mark those which
are badly ruined - but indication is very inexact. For exactitude
- and cartographical beauty - the 1:25,000 (1cm = 250 metres)
Série Bleue should be used by anyone staying in a small
area.
It must
be said that of the thousands of French chamber-tombs, not many
have the attractiveness nor the ambiance of the hundreds scattered
all over Ireland. A great many - especially those on the limestone
causses
of the southwest - are just basic dolmens
simples, or coffres (stone boxes, megalithic cists)
of interest chiefly to professional archæologists.
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Planchat (Creuse)
But there are still
(at the very least) scores of megaliths worth visiting.
Most
are to be found in woodland,
see
an old postcard (by courtesy of Gavin Parry)
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Saint-Saviol (Vienne): Dolmen de la Pierre-Pèse
but not a few are by the roadside,
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Monas (Vienne)
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Miré (Maine-et-Loire)
some
in fields, and some have been dismantled and hauled (even hundreds
of miles) to châteaux or to graveyards.
another
photo
Confolens (Charente): a simple
dolmen bought for 100 francs in 1892 and moved nearly 5
km from Périssac to the town churchyard - as a support
for the sarcophagus of "a lady much addicted to dolmens"
(Glyn Daniel).
- or
to the dry moat of the palace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, north-west
of Paris, which is now France's foremost and marvellous archæological
museum.
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Gallery-tomb (allée-couverte)
from Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Oise)
- with the sealing stone for the pierced entrance.
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Two views of the perfectly-preserved door-slab of La Pierre
aux Fées,
an allée-couverte at Villers-Saint-Sépulcre
(Oise)
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...and a detail of a side-slab
showing a small natural orifice or perforation strategically-situated
in the limestone.
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Villers-Saint-Sépulcre (Oise)
Sometimes, instead of a 'proper' perforation, one finds a semicircular
aperture or lunette in a tomb, as on one of the side-stones
of the large dolmen at Roussayrolles
(Tarn).
The 'bung-hole' (or 'port-hole') at the entrance to the Conflans
tomb and others in the same part of the Ile-de-France is found
in many European tombs in Europe and the Caucasus.
A variant is the 'kennel-hole' (known in France as a porte-au-four
because it looks like the opening of a traditional bread-oven)
- some fine examples of which are to be seen also in the southern
French département of the Hérault,
near Clermont-l'Hérault, and at Wéris
in Belgium.
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La Bertinière also known as La Sauvagère, (Orne)
The selection presented here is also necessarily random. Most
of them were visited during my various travels in Western France
in search of exhibitionist
carvings on Romanesque churches, and their origins.
Some
I photographed without marking them on my map, or I have subsequently
lost the map (as I have repeatedly done with cameras).
So this web-page is not itself a guide. It is, rather, an invitation
to the English-speaking megalith-lover to explore the hidden
treasures of a country brimful of other attractions (except
to vegetarians).
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Tomb with collapsed capstone
at Bouchet, near Gennes
(Maine-et-Loire)