While we had visitors over the long weekend I took them to the marvellous and little known 15th century Chateau de Bridoré. They've made lots of improvements since the last time I was there, several years ago.
The gatehouse, with the tower which houses the silo on the righthand end.
One feature I had only ever seen from the outside before is the granary, or 'silo'. Now you can get inside the tower than protects it, and there is a full explanation of how it worked.
The gatehouse from inside the bas cour (lower courtyard).
The actual granary itself is a 5 metre wide pit in the floor of the tower. This is already a very old idea in the 15th century. We've seen pits for storing grain at a site visit to an archaeological dig of a Gallo-Roman farm near Sublaine, dating from more than a thousand years earlier.
15th century fireplace inside the tower.
The way it works is that the grain is deposited in the pit and trodden down several times to compact it during the process of filling the silo. Then the opening is sealed so the grain is stored hermetically. The top layer of grain will germinate, using up all the oxygen to do so, then die once the silo is anaerobic. This means that the grain is protected from rodents and insects, and so long as it stays dry, will last for years if necessary.
When the grain was to be used the silo was opened and the grain transferred into sacks. A pulley hung from the beam above for hauling them out. I'm guessing that the silo was small enough that hopping in to shovel grain into sacks was not hazardous in the way it would be in a big modern silo (where the grain acts like quicksand).
Display showing how hams, sausages and fish were cured by hanging them from the beams and smoking them in the tower.
In addition to the silo there is a fireplace on the ground floor of the tower. A smoky fire would be used to cure meat and fish hanging from the beams, out of reach of all but the most determined rodents.
The tower which contains the silo would have been used to station guards above what was the main entrance to the chateau in the 15th century.
A pulley used to haul sacks of grain (reconstruction).
In the 1970s the owner of the chateau discovered a human skeleton buried under the dirt floor of the tower, and a 15th century Spanish soldier's metal helmet.
Further Reading:
My post on the Chateau de Bridoré https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2015/03/chateau-de-bridore.html
My post about visiting the archaeological site near Sublaine https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2021/07/visiting-archaeological-dig.html
No comments:
Post a Comment