Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe

by S. Baring-Gould

The volcanic breccia as well as chalk and limestone has been utilised for the habitation of man. There is a very interesting collection of cave-dwellings all artificial, the Balmes du Montbrun, a volcanic crater of the Coiron, near S. Jean le Centenier in the Vivarais. The crater is 300 feet in diameter and 480 feet deep; and man has burrowed into the sides of porous lava or pumice to form a series of habitations, a chapel, and one that is traditionally said to have served as a prison. This rock settlement was occupied till the close of the eighteenth century.

The Grottoes de Boissière are twelve in number, on the side of the Puy de Châteauneuf, commanding the road from Saint Nectaire to Marols, Puy de Dôme. They are excavated in the volcanic tufa, and are all much of the same dimensions; one, however, measures 28 feet by 12 feet, and is 7 feet high. Below the grottoes the slope of the hill is parcelled out into small fields or gardens by means of walls of stones laid one on another without mortar, showing that the inhabitants of these caves lived there permanently and cultivated the ground below their dwellings. [Footnote: There are others, Les Grottes de Rajah, in the same mass of rock, with near them an isolated rock carved about and supposed to have been an idol.] More curious still are the Grottoes de Jonas on the Couze, also in Puy de Dôme, near Cheix. They are in stages one range above another to the height of from 90 to 120 feet. The face of the mountain is precipitous, and is of a porous tufa full of holes. As many as sixty of these artificial caves remain; but there were at one time many more, that have been destroyed by the fall of the very friable volcanic rock. It is impossible to determine the period at which these caves were excavated; they were probably prehistoric to begin with, but were tenanted during the Middle Ages when—if not later—the tracks leading to them were cut in the tufa and stairs to connect the several stages. Then paths were bordered by walls as a protection, and fragments of the parapet remain. Probably it was during the English occupation of Guienne which extended into Auvergne, that a castle and a chapel were sculptured out of the living rock. At the same time a remarkable spiral staircase was contrived in like manner. Numerous relics of all periods—flint tools, bronze weapons, statuettes, and coins—have been found among the rubbish thrown out from these dens. [Footnote: G. Tournier, Les Mégalithes et les Grottes des environs de S. Nectaire. Paris, 1910.]

On the Borne, in Haute Loire, dug out of the volcanic rock are several cave-dwellings. The caves at Conteaux are fourteen in number, the largest is divided into three compartments; each is 45 feet deep and 11 feet wide, but the usual dimension is from 28 to 36 feet. In all, the vault is rather over 6 feet high. An opening in the roof of one gave vent to smoke.

The rock of Ceyssac is curious. Formerly a barrier of volcanic tufa stretched across the valley of the Borne; this barrier had been ejected from the volcano of La Denise. The river, arrested in its onward course, was ponded back and formed a lake that overflowed the dam in two places, leaving between them a fang of harder rock. When the water had spilled for a considerable time over the left-hand lip, and had worn this down to a depth of about 70 feet, it all at once abandoned this mode of outlet and concentrated its efforts on the right-hand portion of the dam where it found the tufa less compact. It eventually sawed its way completely through till it reached its present level, leaving the prong of rock in the middle rising precipitously out of the valley with the river gliding peacefully below it, but attached to the mountain side by the neck it had abandoned. The fang was laid hold of, burrowed into, and converted into a village of Troglodytes. In it are cave-dwellings in five superposed storeys, stables with their mangers, with rings for tying up cattle, a vast hall, that is circular, and chambers with lockers and seats graven out of the sides of the walls. There is also a subterranean chapel, with the entrance blocked by a wall that contains an early Romanesque doorway. The Polignacs seized on the spike of rock and built on the summit a castle that could be reached only by a flight of steps cut in the face of the rock. By degrees the inhabitants have migrated from their caves to the neck of land connecting the prong with the hill, and have built themselves houses thereon. They have even abandoned their monolithic church and erected in its place an unsightly modern building.

There are other cave-dwellings in the volcanic rocks of the Cevennes and Auvergne, but the above account must suffice.

I will now say something about the Troglodyte dwellings in the sandstone in Corrèze, in the neighbourhood of Brive, caves that have been inhabited from the time of the man who was contemporary with the mammoth, to this day. Some have, however, been abandoned comparatively recently.

They do not run deep into the rock; usually they face the south or south-west, and are sometimes in a series at the same level; sometimes they form several storeys, which communicated with each other by ladders that passed through holes cut in the floor of the upper storey, or else by a narrow cornice, wide enough for one to walk on. Sometimes this cornice has been abraded by the weather, and fallen away; in which case these cave-dwellings can be reached only by a ladder. There are caves in which notches cut in the rock show where beams had been inserted, and struts to maintain them, so as to form a wooden balcony for communication between the chambers, or between the dwellings of neighbours.

The doorways into these habitations are usually cut so as to admit a wooden frame to which a door might be attached; and there are deep holes bored in the rock, very much as in our old churches and towers, for the cross-piece of timber that effectually fastened the door.

The grottoes are cut square, the ceilings are always sensibly horizontal, and the walls always vertical. But where a natural hollow has been artificially deepened, there the opening is usually irregular. Moreover, in such case, the gaping mouth of the cave was in part walled up. The traces of the tool employed are everywhere observable, they indicate that the rock was cut by a pick having a triangular point. Small square holes in the sides, and long horizontal grooves indicate the position of shelves. Square hollows of considerable size served as cupboards, and oblong rectangular recesses, 18 inches above the floor, and from 3 feet 9 inches to 4 feet 6 inches high and a foot deep were benches. Bedplaces were also cut in the rock.

There are also indications of a floor having been carried across in some of the loftier caves, and there are openings in the roofs through which ascent was made to the series of chambers on the upper storey. Holes pierced in the ceiling served for the suspension of articles liable to be injured by proximity to a damp rock. A string was attached to the middle of a short stick, that was thrust into the hole. The string was then pulled and it was fast. Another plan was that of boring holes at an angle into the rock at the side. Into these holes rods were thrust and what was required to be kept dry was suspended from them.