Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet
MonumentHidden Treasure
Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet, located in Gennes (Maine-et-Loire), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Gennes, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.3380, -0.2639
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00109429
A stone sentinel at the gateway to Gennes, the Pierre Longue du Bouchet is a strikingly sober Neolithic menhir, silent testimony to a particularly dense megalithic civilisation in the Val d'Anjou.
History
At the heart of an area of Angers saturated with prehistoric memory, the Pierre Longue du Bouchet stands out in the landscape with the authoritative discretion of the great menhirs: a monolith planted in the earth as a statement, a sign addressed to a horizon that we no longer know how to read. Gennes and the surrounding area is one of the most remarkable megalithic sites in Maine-et-Loire, with a concentration of alignments, dolmens and standing stones that rivals those in Brittany or Carnac. The Pierre Longue du Bouchet is part of this mineral constellation, with its own identity as an isolated menhir whose slender silhouette speaks to the Loire sky. What makes this monument so unique is precisely its solitary nature. Unlike the great alignments that draw their power from numbers, an isolated menhir concentrates within itself all the symbolic charge of the founding act: digging the earth, erecting the stone, asserting a presence. The Pierre Longue du Bouchet embodies this economy of means taken to the extreme. Its verticality contrasts with the horizontality of the surrounding Anjou bocage, creating a visual landmark that Neolithic man probably used as a territorial, funerary or astronomical marker. The visitor experience is that of an intimate, almost bare encounter. No grid, no audio guide: just the stone and the visitor, separated by five or six millennia. You circle the monolith, reach out to its grainy surface, look up to its tapering summit. It's one of the rare occasions when heritage is experienced in absolute silence, without the mediation of built architecture or interior décor. The natural setting reinforces this impression of a break in time. The area around Gennes offers a landscape of gentle limestone hills, vineyards and pink tuffeau, a material that is omnipresent in the Loire Valley. The contrast between the roughness of the sandstone or shale of the menhir and the gentleness of the Loire landscape is an aesthetic experience in itself that photography enthusiasts will not fail to capture, particularly in the low-angled light of late afternoon.
Architecture
The Pierre Longue du Bouchet belongs to the category of menhirs, a term of Breton origin (men, the stone; hir, long) that designates any block of stone erected vertically by human intervention. Its local name - "Pierre Longue" - confirms that the vertical dimension of the monolith struck a chord in the imagination of the local people, suggesting a significant shaft height, probably in excess of two metres, which places it in the upper middle range of isolated Anjou menhirs. The constituent material is almost certainly local sandstone or shale, the hard, erosion-resistant rocks favoured by the Neolithic builders of this region for their durable monuments. The surface of the monolith bears the marks of time: grey-orange lichens, slight crevices created by frost and rain, and a mineral patina that gives it a grey to brownish hue depending on the lighting. The cross-sectional plan is generally ovoid or slightly flattened, characteristic of menhirs in this geographical region, giving them a preferential orientation and suggesting intentional positioning in relation to the points of the compass or the sunrises and sunsets at the solstices. The menhirs are set in the ground by excavating a pit and wedging them in place with secondary stone blocks, a technique universally used for menhirs in western France. The buried part generally represents between a quarter and a third of the total height of the block, guaranteeing the stability of the whole over the millennia. The absence of any visible sculpted decoration distinguishes it from Breton anthropomorphic menhirs, but does not rule out the presence of discreet engraved signs that only close examination would reveal.
Related Figures
Bâtisseurs néolithiques anonymes (vers 4000-2500 av. J.-C.) — communautés paysannes et pastorales à l'origine de l'érection du menhirAntiquaires angevins du XIXe siècle — érudits locaux ayant inventorié et documenté les premiers les mégalithes de la région de GennesInspecteurs des Monuments Historiques (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles des Pays de la Loire) — auteurs de l'arrêté d'inscription du 3 octobre 1990
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet located?
Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet is located in Gennes, Maine-et-Loire department, Pays de la Loire region, France.
Is Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet open to visitors?
Pierre dressée, dite Pierre Longue du Bouchet is currently closed to visitors.