Maison à empilage de planches de Jouandis
MonumentHidden Treasure
A rare 14th-century stacked plank house nestling in the heart of the Périgord Noir. An exceptional example of medieval rural wooden architecture, classified as a Historic Monument for its ethnological uniqueness.
History
In the heart of the Dordogne, in the peaceful village of Sainte-Sabine-Born, stands one of the rarest and most precious rural buildings in France: the stacked plank house of Jouandis. Listed as a Historic Monument in 1996, it belongs to a family of rural buildings of which only a tiny handful survive in the whole of France, making it much more than a simple dwelling - it's a living architectural document. What is immediately striking is the absolute coherence of a construction system that the medieval builders of the Périgord had brought to a form of artisanal perfection. The walls are not made of stone, cob or traditional half-timbering: they are made of thick planks of wood, carefully stacked and interlocked using an ingenious tongue-and-groove system, creating a dense, insulating and surprisingly solid wall. This technique, heir to ancestral forestry know-how, is in keeping with the building traditions of northern Europe, while taking on a profoundly Périgord identity here. The visitor experience is that of a journey back in time on a human scale. There are no grand reception rooms or stately decorations: you'll find yourself looking at a medieval peasant's home in all its honesty, with its two rooms separated by a half-timbered and wattle-and-daub partition, its base of local masonry, and its corner posts set into the stone. The house tells the story of a frugal but ingenious lifestyle, adapted to the wood available in the oak forests of Périgord. The setting adds to the quality of the immersion. Sainte-Sabine-Born is a quiet market town in the Périgord Noir, with landscapes of limestone plateaux and gentle valleys, just a few leagues from Bergerac and the Monbazillac vineyards. The Jouandis house stands out like a marvellous anomaly in the local built landscape, reminding us that the French countryside sometimes conceals, behind their modest appearances, real treasures of the history of techniques.
Architecture
The Jouandis house is a remarkably pure example of the stacked plank construction system, or "blockbau" as it is known in southern France. The building, with its simple rectangular plan, rests on a masonry base made of local limestone, which insulates it from the dampness of the ground - an essential precaution to preserve the wooden structure. Above this base, the walls are made entirely of solid wood planks, cut to thickness and carefully assembled using a tongue-and-groove system: each plank fits into the next with a precision that eliminates any gaps and guarantees airtightness. Corner posts at the corners receive the ends of the boards, ensuring the stability of the whole. The frame posts frame the openings, mounted on a bottom plate and connected at the top to a top plate by a mortise and tenon joint, a system typical of high-quality medieval carpentry. Inside, the space is divided into two rooms by a half-timbered and wattle-and-daub partition, a technique that complements stacked construction, which uses clay fill between a network of intersecting timbers. This juxtaposition of two different construction techniques - stacking for the exterior load-bearing walls and cob for the interior partition - reveals the mastery and pragmatism of the builders. The original roof, probably made of limestone lauzes or flat tiles in the Périgord tradition, crowned the whole with a low to medium pitched roof adapted to the local climate. The building thus stands out as an unadulterated example of everyday architecture, with a formal honesty that today constitutes its greatest heritage asset.
Related Figures
Maîtres-charpentiers anonymes du XIVe siècle, bâtisseurs originels de la maisonFamilles paysannes périgourdines ayant habité et entretenu l'édifice sur plusieurs sièclesEthnologues et chercheurs du service régional de l'Inventaire du patrimoine culturel d'Aquitaine, acteurs de la redécouverte de l'édificeInspecteurs des Monuments Historiques ayant instruit le dossier de classement de 1996
