Menhir dit La Pierre Plate
MonumentHidden Treasure
Menhir dit La Pierre Plate, located in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Cholet, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.0441, -0.8543
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00109053
A stone sentinel that has stood at the gates of Cholet since the Neolithic period, the Pierre Plate is one of the best-preserved menhirs in Maine-et-Loire, a silent remnant of an agrarian and ritual civilisation dating back more than 5,000 years.
History
In the heart of the Choletais bocage, in a landscape of hedgerows and hedged meadows characteristic of southern Maine-et-Loire, stands the Pierre Plate: a solitary menhir that has stood for thousands of years without batting an eyelid. This monolith, erected vertically by Neolithic hands, is one of the oldest signs of organised human presence in the area, long before the great medieval dynasties that were to make Anjou famous. What makes La Pierre Plate truly unique is its location on the outskirts of town, in the immediate vicinity of a long-established industrial and cloth-making town. While urban development has eroded much of the prehistoric heritage of the Cholet area, this menhir has survived, preserved by local vigilance and officially listed as a Historic Monument in 1976. It bears witness to a mental and cultic landscape that we can only imagine, populated by agrarian rites, astronomical observations and territorial markers. A visit to the Pierre Plate is a contemplative and disorientating experience. Visitors come face to face with a mass of raw mineral, carved or chosen for its natural verticality, which imposes an undeniable physical presence. There are no sophisticated signposts or museological displays here: just stone and the Anjou sky. This sobriety compels the eye and invites a form of meditation on the longevity of human memory. The surrounding setting, between traditional bocage and urban fringe, provides a striking contrast that reinforces the monument's symbolic charge. Photography enthusiasts will find the contrast between thousand-year-old stone and contemporary landscape a rare source of inspiration. Families and enthusiasts of prehistoric archaeology will also appreciate the proximity of other megalithic sites in the département, making it possible to put together an itinerary dedicated to the Neolithic period in Angers.
Architecture
The Pierre Plate is a menhir, a monolith of rough or slightly worked rock planted vertically in the ground by Neolithic populations. Its popular name - "Pierre Plate" - suggests a particular morphology: unlike menhirs with a rounded or tapering cross-section, this one probably has a flattened, wide face, characteristic of certain blocks of local sandstone or shale, of which the Choletais region is rich in geology. This wider shape gives it a recognisable silhouette, more akin to an upright slab than an obelisk. The precise dimensions are not always recorded in the available sources, but menhirs in this region are commonly between 2 and 4 metres high above ground, with a buried base representing a further third of the total mass. The stability of the whole structure rests on this buried base, wedged in place by blocking stones arranged in a ring around the foot. The material used was almost certainly local granite or sandstone, abundant in the subsoil of the Vendée and Cholet bocage areas, which shows that the people who built it knew the area well. No engraved ornamentation has been documented on the Pierre Plate, but the absence of recent systematic surveys means that we cannot rule out the presence of cupules or discreet recessed motifs, common on neighbouring Armorican menhirs. The overall appearance remains that of an architecture of absolute sobriety: the power of the object lies in the contrast between the inert mass of the rock and its deliberate erection towards the sky, a founding gesture of a humanity learning to mark space and time.
Related Figures
Communautés néolithiques du bassin choletais (4500-2000 av. J.-C.) — érecteurs du menhirÉrudits de la Société des sciences, lettres et arts de Cholet (XIXe siècle) — premiers recenseurs du monumentInspecteurs des Monuments Historiques (1976) — responsables de la protection officielle du site
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Menhir dit La Pierre Plate located?
Menhir dit La Pierre Plate is located in Cholet, Maine-et-Loire department, Pays de la Loire region, France.
Is Menhir dit La Pierre Plate open to visitors?
Menhir dit La Pierre Plate is currently closed to visitors.