Sentiers du Patrimoine ®
Le Perchay
Poursuivre jusqu’au le lavoir de la vallée aux Moines.
Prochain point : Lat. 49.11098, Long. 1.93627
Before the invention of the washing machine, doing the laundry was a task that took several days. After washing their clothes at home, women carried the laundry down to the washhouse, where they rinsed the fabric and removed the last remaining stains.
Like most communal washhouses in France, this one was probably built by the municipality during the 19th century and restored several times over the years. Its four rubble-stone walls sheltered the washerwomen from the wind, while the roof protected them from the rain.
A particularly unusual feature is found on the two side walls: loading stones, each formed by three large projecting blocks. These provided convenient supports on which women could rest their wicker laundry baskets while loading them onto their backs. This thoughtful detail reflects an effort to make an exclusively female task a little easier, although washing clothes by hand remained physically demanding and time-consuming.
The washhouse stands at the transition between the narrow ravine of Le Perchay and the wider Valley of the Monks. This change in landscape is the result of erosion.
During periods of heavy rainfall, water draining from almost 500 hectares of farmland rushes into the ravine, gradually cutting deeper into the landscape and creating its steep-sided slopes.
In lighter rainfall, however, the water seeps directly into the ground instead of flowing across the surface. It then joins the underground aquifer, which re-emerges here at the washhouse as a natural spring.
Underground, the water slowly dissolves and erodes the rock before reaching the surface. This process, known as spring sapping, gradually causes the head of the valley to retreat, creating the distinctive amphitheatre-shaped landscape visible today.
