Sentiers du Patrimoine ®
Saint-Cyr-en-Arthies
Revenir sur le chemin puis remonter la rue du Coteau. Traverser la rue pour monter au presbytère.
Prochain point : Lat. 49.0617548, Long. 1.7423302
La sente de la carrière runs along the hillside on some hundred meters. It is bordered with houses whose oldest foundations are anterior to the 17th century. Some others were erected a little later between 1788 and 1820 by artisans - bricklayers, carpenters and roofers – living in the hamlet of des Ravenelles. This was a bunch of small rural houses leaning on the side of the hillside and covered in thatch. At number 2 de la sente, a former property of Madame Maupoil (the château owner of La Bûcherie) has been rehabilitated into council flats and hosts the town library. At the end of la sente, the entrance to the quarry opens up thanks to a very goodlooking semicircular arch. The quarry was exploited from 1860 to 1890 to extract the limestone aimed at producing cut stone. Now decommissioned, it spreads down to some 80 metres deep.
The quarry has now become a paradise for bats or chiroptera, who search for dark places in the winter, damp and with constant temperatures for their hibernation. Frequented each year by species under European protection, such as the Lesser horseshoe bat (in danger of being extinct in Ile-de-France), the quarry is since 2007 part of the Natura 2000 “Chiroptera sites of the French Vexin” dedicated to the conservation of the hibernation quarries of the Vexin. Concerned about protecting its small lodgers, the town put up a special gate in 2016 at the entrance of the cave in order to avoid human intrusions which can be fatal to hibernating bats, leaving a horizontal opening , or “bat flap,” to allow these small mammals to run around freely.
