Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre
MonumentHidden Treasure
Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre, located in Areines (Loir-et-Cher), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Areines, Loir-et-Cher, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.7872, 1.1057
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00098320
A stone sentinel since the Neolithic period at the gateway to Vendôme, the Huchigny menhir - known as the Grosse Pierre - has watched over the Loir-et-Cher region for over five thousand years.
© Wikimedia Commons / Wikipedia
History
In the heart of the Loir-et-Cher region, in the municipality of Areines, a mass of siliceous sandstone has stood in the landscape for thousands of years: the Huchigny menhir, soberly nicknamed "the Big Stone" by the locals. This monolith bears witness to an ancient and organised human presence in the Loir valley, long before Vendôme became a Gallo-Roman and then a medieval city. The singularity of this menhir lies in its remarkable preservation for a monument of this nature in the Centre-Val de Loire region. Where many megaliths have disappeared under the ploughshare or the hands of men who saw it as a simple deposit of materials, the Grosse Pierre has survived the centuries almost intact. Its stocky, slightly leaning silhouette gives it an undeniable telluric presence, that sense of dialogue between earth and sky that characterises the great standing stones of the European Neolithic. To visit the Huchigny menhir is to experience a radically different temporality. There's no staging, no sophisticated signposting: the stone just stands there, untouched, in the middle of the agricultural and hedged farmland typical of the Vendôme region. This simplicity is precisely what touches visitors. You get a sense of the founding gesture - planting a colossal stone in a plain - without the mediation of modern tourist comforts. The surrounding area adds to the interest of the site. Areines is a historic commune next to Vendôme; its surroundings are a mixture of cereal crops, damp hedged farmland and a few patches of forest. The menhir is part of the gentle, open landscape of the Val du Loir, a region through which the medieval pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela also passed. The superimposition of time - prehistoric, medieval, contemporary - is one of the site's silent treasures.
Architecture
The Huchigny menhir is a monolith of siliceous sandstone, a robust rock that is abundant in the subsoil of the Vendôme region. Its general shape is that of an irregular parallelepiped, slightly flared at the base and tapering towards the top, a characteristic profile of menhirs in the Centre-West region of France. Its height above ground is estimated at around two metres, with a buried section guaranteeing its stability - a systematic practice among Neolithic builders, who buried between a quarter and a third of the total length of the block to ensure that it held together. The total mass of the monolith probably exceeds several tonnes. The surface of the stone bears the scars of time: grey and orange lichens colonise the north-facing side, while the south side has a warmer hue and a slightly smoother texture, the result of centuries of exposure to the sun. No engravings or cupules have yet been recorded on the Huchigny menhir, which sets it apart from some of the ornate megaliths in the Brittany or Quercy regions, but remains common for menhirs in the Centre-Val de Loire region. As with many monuments of this type in Western Europe, its orientation corresponds to criteria that merit in-depth archaeoastronomical study.
Related Figures
Communautés néolithiques du Vendômois (Ve-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.) — érigeurs présumés du menhirCasimir Chevalier (1825-1887) — érudit tourangeau et historien du patrimoine préhistorique de la Touraine et du Loir-et-CherInspecteurs des Monuments Historiques (début XXe s.) — responsables du classement de 1909
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre located?
Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre is located in Areines, Loir-et-Cher department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
Is Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre open to visitors?
Menhir d'Huchigny ou de la Grosse Pierre is currently closed to visitors.