page_title: Cabanes du Breuil
section_title: Date of Building
hierarchical_section_title: Cabanes du Breuil / Date of Building
caption_attribution_description: Les «Cabanes du Breuil» à Saint-André-d'Allas en Dordogne (France). Le porche d'entrée de l'ancienne ferme et le premier groupe de cabanes. Photographie prise par Patrick GIRAUD / The site known as "Cabanes du Breuil" at Saint-André-d'Allas, Dordogne (France). The gateway of the ancient farmhouse and the first group of stone huts. Photograph taken by Patrick GIRAUD.
context_page_description: The designation Cabanes du Breuil is applied to the former agricultural dependencies of a farm located at the place known as Calpalmas at Saint-André-d'Allas, in the Dordogne department in France. Dating from the 19th century, if not the very early 20th century, these buildings share two distinguishing features, their being covered by a dry stone corbelled vault underneath a roofing of stone tiles and their being in clusters.
context_section_description: According to the Cabanes du Breuil's Internet site (see External Links), "In the Middle Ages, the cabanes du Breuil were inhabited by the Benedictine monks of Sarlat", a proof of this being a sale deed of "1449, the earliest written trace testifying to their presence". However, the alleged deed remains unpublished and its whereabouts and content are unknown. Besides, Calpalmas is a different place from Le Breuil.
  In the book "Les cabanes en pierre sèche du Périgord" (The Dry Stone Huts of Périgord) published in 2002 (see Bibliography), the author states that "Le Breuil was once a possession of the Benedictines in the Chapter of Sarlat Bishopric, but nowhere is there any mention that the stone huts we see today already existed." He adds: "Twenty years ago, the landlady used to boast that the stone huts had been built or entirely rebuilt by her grandfather, at the beginning of the 20th century."
  Again, according to the Cabanes du Breuil's website, rural craftsmen - a blacksmith, a harness maker and a weaver - are said to have rented some of the huts in order to practise their craft, an assertion that is not borne out by any textual document. In the hut supposedly used by a blacksmith, a pair of bellows sits prominently outside a small hearth. A postcard from the 1970s shows the same building being used as a sheepfold: a dozen sheep are seen leaving it under the guidance of the then farmer and his wife. Another hut was endowed  with a faux chimney piece in 1988 so as to display utensils that belonged to the grandparents of the farm's present-day owners.
caption: The first two huts of group 1.
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