Allée couverte de Kerampicard
MonumentHidden Treasure
Allée couverte de Kerampicard, located in La Forêt-Fouesnant (Département 29), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- La Forêt-Fouesnant, Département 29, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.9188, -3.9551
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00089955
A discreet Neolithic vestige nestling in the Finistère bocage, the Kerampicard covered walkway reveals its thousand-year-old granite slabs to the initiated who know how to find it, at the gateway to the Bay of La Forêt.
History
On the edge of the Fouesnant region, where the fields of hedged farmland open out onto the first breaths of La Forêt bay, the covered alleyway of Kerampicard emerges like a secret that the earth has only half kept. This megalithic monument, erected some five to six thousand years ago by Neolithic communities in Finistère, belongs to the family of collective burial sites that discreetly criss-cross the Breton hinterland, away from the main tourist routes. What makes Kerampicard so special is the extent to which it has been preserved in an agricultural landscape that has often sacrificed ancestral stones to the needs of the fields. Its orthostats - large vertical slabs planted in the clay soil of South Finistère - form an elongated chamber whose low, compact silhouette is characteristic of Armorican covered walkways. The granite slab roof rests directly on the uprights, creating a dark, solemn corridor that invites both contemplation and questioning. A visit to Kerampicard is an almost intimate experience. Far from the crowds that flock to Carnac or Locmariaquer, here visitors can take the time to put their hands on the granite, to feel the rough grain of the rock, to imagine the Neolithic funeral procession stripping its dead in this stone corridor. The silence is disturbed only by the wind from the nearby sea and the birdsong in the surrounding hedgerows. The setting itself is an invitation to wander: the dense bocage, the sunken paths shaded by pedunculate oaks and the changing Atlantic light create a picture in which the megalithic stone seems perfectly at home, as if modernity had never quite dared to surround it.
Architecture
The covered alleyway at Kerampicard has the typical structural features of megalithic burials in southern Finistère: an elongated plan, oriented along an axis that veers slightly from east to west, made up of two rows of local granite orthostats set into the ground and linked by a series of horizontally-laid covering slabs. Like most of its equivalents in the Finistère region, the chamber thus formed measures between six and twelve metres in length, with an interior width of around one to one-and-a-half metres - enough to allow a body to pass through when lying down or bent over. The granite used is from the Armorican massif, a material of exceptional hardness and longevity, which explains the monument's survival over the millennia. The roof slabs, weighing up to several tonnes, bear witness to remarkable technical mastery: their installation involved collective lifting and dragging systems, probably using earthen ramps, wooden rollers and highly coordinated human organisation. The chevet slab, which closes off the southern or western end of the corridor depending on the orientation of the monument, is one of the most expressive elements of the whole. The absence of any visible plaster or interior facing - unlike some of the chamber cairns in Morbihan - indicates that the raw rock was used as a building material, without decoration. While rock engravings exist on some comparable monuments in Finistère, their presence or absence at Kerampicard has not been definitively established in the available sources.
Related Figures
Bâtisseurs néolithiques anonymes (vers 3500-2500 av. J.-C.) — communautés agropastorales armoricaines érigeurs du monumentProsper de Mérimée — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques au XIXe siècle, pionnier de la protection du patrimoine mégalithique bretonPaul Du Châtellier (1833-1911) — archéologue finistérien majeur, fouilleur et recenseur de nombreux mégalithes du sud-FinistèreMembres de la Société archéologique du Finistère (fondée en 1844) — érudits locaux ayant contribué à la documentation et à la sauvegarde des mégalithes du département
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Allée couverte de Kerampicard located?
Allée couverte de Kerampicard is located in La Forêt-Fouesnant, Département 29 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Allée couverte de Kerampicard open to visitors?
Allée couverte de Kerampicard is currently closed to visitors.