Menhir dit Le Fuseau
MonumentHidden Treasure
Menhir dit Le Fuseau, located in Plaine-Haute (Département 22), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Plaine-Haute, Département 22, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 48.4307, -2.8522
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00089390
A stone sentinel in the heart of the Côtes-d'Armor region, the Menhir known as Le Fuseau de Plaine-Haute fascinates with its slender, streamlined silhouette, a rare testimony to Breton megalithic spirituality.
History
In the heart of the Côtes-d'Armor bocage, in Plaine-Haute, stands a thousand-year-old presence that you don't always expect to come across: a solitary menhir, slender as a giant spinner's spindle, planted in the Breton soil over five thousand years ago. This monolith, whose popular name says it all - tapered, narrow at the ends, swollen at the centre - belongs to the family of standing stones that dot Brittany from Finistère to Dinan, silent witnesses to a Neolithic civilisation whose technical and symbolic mastery continues to defy our understanding. What sets Le Fuseau apart from the many Breton menhirs is precisely this meticulous morphology. Far from being crude blocks, the stone has a remarkable curvature that implies deliberate, even ritual, carving. The Neolithic builders of this region readily exploited outcrops of Armorican sandstone and local granite, carefully choosing blocks whose natural shape could be refined to approach the vertical ideal they were seeking. The choice of location, too, is never insignificant: a careful look at the surrounding landscape often reveals ridge lines, springs or calendar markers that these stones were perhaps used to mark. To visit Le Fuseau is to take a moment out in a rural landscape that modernity has not entirely erased. The hedgerows, sunken lanes and open fields around the menhir are typical of the interior of the Côtes-d'Armor, away from the main tourist routes. This discretion is a privilege: where Carnac attracts crowds, Le Fuseau can be approached in silence, in an intimacy conducive to contemplation. You take your time to walk around the stone, to feel its granite texture, to look for any traces of polishing or engraving on its faces. The mysterious dimension of the site is amplified by local oral tradition, which, as with most Breton menhirs, has embroidered the stone with tales of fairies, giants and nocturnal processions. These legends, collected in the 19th century by Breton folklorists, form an intangible heritage that is inseparable from the stone itself. They are a reminder that the menhir has never ceased to be alive in the imagination of the communities that have lived alongside it over the centuries.
Architecture
The Menhir known as Le Fuseau owes its name to its characteristic shape: a stone shaft that tapers progressively towards the top and base, evoking the spinning tool from which it takes its name. This tapered morphology, less common than that of menhirs with a simply rectangular cross-section or regular conical profile, bears witness to the particular care taken in shaping the block during its extraction and transportation. The material is probably Armorian granite or sandstone, abundant in the subsoil of the Côtes-d'Armor, extracted from a natural outcrop some distance from the erection site, then dragged and erected using a system of levers, ramps and ropes that Neolithic builders mastered with remarkable efficiency. The height of the menhir, estimated at between two and four metres above ground according to comparable regional descriptions for this type of monument in the département, gives it a significant visual presence in the surrounding hedged farmland. The part buried in the ground generally represents a third to a quarter of the total length of the block, ensuring the stability of the whole without a masonry foundation. The surface of the stone bears the marks of time: grey-orange lichens, micro-cracks caused by freezing and thawing cycles, and perhaps traces of polishing or ritual use that are difficult to distinguish from natural erosion without specialist examination. The orientation of the menhir, like that of most Breton Neolithic standing stones, is probably not fortuitous. Studies carried out on comparable monuments in the region show correlations with sunrises or sunsets at solstices and equinoxes, or with significant local topographical landmarks. The Fuseau is thus part of an overall landscape architecture that Neolithic builders conceived on the scale of the territory, making each stone a node in a network of meanings that is today partially illegible.
Related Figures
Les bâtisseurs néolithiques armoricains (4500-2000 av. J.-C.) — communautés agro-pastorales à l'origine de l'érection du menhirLes érudits de la Société d'Émulation des Côtes-du-Nord (XIXe siècle) — premiers à recenser et décrire le monumentProsper Mérimée (1803-1870) — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, initiateur de la politique nationale de protection des mégalithes bretonsPaul du Châtellier (1833-1911) — archéologue breton pionnier dans l'inventaire des mégalithes armoricainsZacharie Le Rouzic (1864-1939) — conservateur du musée de Préhistoire de Carnac, dont les travaux ont influencé la protection des menhirs bretons
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Menhir dit Le Fuseau located?
Menhir dit Le Fuseau is located in Plaine-Haute, Département 22 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Menhir dit Le Fuseau open to visitors?
Menhir dit Le Fuseau is currently closed to visitors.
