Informations directionnelles

Redescendre par le même chemin, reprendre la RD 913 sur la gauche et prendre la route à droite en descente, direction « mairie – église ». Longer le Château des anciens seigneurs (6), y admirer une porte monumentale.

Fairy cellar
A Celtic monument just outside Vexin, at “Le four à chaux”.

 

 

From prehistoric times...

This prehistoric gallery grave is a community burial site constructed in the Late Neolithic period (2200 BCE). It was discovered in the middle of the seventeenth century and meticulously excavated in 1889 by Adrien Mortillet. From the skeletal remains he found, he estimated that 150 burials had taken place here. Objects have also been found, such as axes, flint blades, bone beads and pottery shards... Half buried on a hillside, it is fourteen meters long, one meter fifty wide and up to two and a half meters deep. All that remains today are the burial chamber, consisting of large vertical slabs supported by dry stone walls, and the entrance slab, with a hole and rabbet that was once plugged with stone. The antechamber, if it ever existed, has since disappeared. The archives indicate the presence of roofing slabs until the eighteenth century. They have also disappeared today. On the penultimate pillar on the left there are engravings of a cross, a badge and a paddle. These themes evoke those used in Armorica, the part of Gaul between the Seine and Loire rivers, but it is strange to find them in the Paris Basin. The engravings made by stippling are very worn and therefore rather difficult to see. Classified as a historic monument in 1957, it was abandoned until 1975. Restoration work was then undertaken by the Regional Archaeology Department, revealing the imposing architecture of the "Fairies’ Cellar". The town became the owner in 2006.

 

 

...to celtic druids...

A Druid altar once stood here, where in 1899 skulls and bones were found. All that remain today are the stone supports. The tables were broken up to serve as building stones. The remains of an axe, a large grey flint blade, two small blades, several retouchers, some transverse arrowheads, a square piece of bone with a hole in it and two bone pins were also discovered here. In 1935, a triangular slab was unearthed from the rubble of the entrance, with four grooves evoking a polisher.

 

 

...to legends

Many folk legends surround this prehistoric place, giving it its name. "Fairy Cellar" terrorized generations of villagers who believed the place was the domain of fairies whose sole occupation was to frighten anyone who passed by. People also spoke of apparitions on very dark nights and of a white cow that trampled the neighbouring fields. And finally it was reputed to be the den of an imaginary headless character named Blaisot, who ran through the countryside at night uttering ghastly cries and leading lone travellers astray.
In 1833, Armand Cassan, sub-prefect of Mantes, recounted: "Toward the middle of the last century, a stranger who had come to visit Breuil, asked the people one day:" Who is the fortunate man who owns Fairy Cellar near the Druid altar? It contains the remains and treasures of the Gauls". The inhabitants of Breuil immediately flocked to the castle, asking the Lord for permission to excavate "Fairy Cellar". They had barely begun, when they found a stairway, a subterranean vault, long rows of skeletons and weapons; but they were suddenly seized with panic and ran out, filling in the entrance to the underground passage. Nobody has visited "Fairy Cellar" since that day. "