Association de Sauvegarde du

CHATEAU DE GAVRAY

THE AB BUILDING

3.1 Exposed structures

It is a vast building of which only the basement remains and whose external appearance cannot be envisaged. This basement, approximately 16m x 6m, is separated into two communicating rooms by a one-metre-thick middle wall leaning against the north and south walls of the building. It includes reused materials (paving tiles, tiles) that indicate late development. Its finish was nevertheless meticulous: the joints, with lime mortar, are highlighted with a trowel stroke. The doorway, with its neat corner stones, shows that the door opened into room A, through which access was made to the basement.

This building is leaning against the perimeter wall (which therefore predates it) to the east. This perimeter wall has a slight inflection at this point, a rectilinear interior wall has doubled it. There is no trace of visible mortar or joints. The stones are of irregular modulus. It is preserved at a height of 4 m. The south wall has not been completely cleared from the earth and only its inner face can be observed. It seems that it has also received an interior dub, at least in the eastern part. Towards its western end, some missing stones show that it is, at this point, attached to the rock. The presence of the rock is also confirmed in the southwest corner. The west wall, which is thin (0.70 m), has stones of a smaller modulus than the other walls.

A stairway, with at least 8 steps (the base is not visible) rests on the west wall. Its base is made of purple puddingstone, like the rest of the buildings. The steps are made of coloured slabs (greenish, reddish) and various facies, sandstone, schist, micaceous. All of them may have a local origin, borrowed from the "lower Campeaux slabs"  and the "upper Campeaux slabs".

Was the access to the basement through room A, from which room B could be reached ?

A structure discovered between the staircase and the south wall allows us to imagine how, on this side, the room was lit: we have, in fact, the base of a window well.

The north wall has a peculiar appearance at its western end. Relatively homogeneous along its entire length, it shows a significant recess and an obvious resumption of construction: the wall ended about 2 m from the west end of the building (visible quoins). The opening at this location was obviously blocked by a thinner wall whose stones, of smaller modulus, are reminiscent of those of the west wall.

The excavation of room C confirmed this observation: the north wall of rooms A and B is in fact the outer wall of a partially destroyed building, which occupied the north-east corner of the enclosure.

Finally, this building had a planked floor, roughly at the occupancy level of room C adjoining. The discovery of a stair tower made it possible to envisage a second level.

3.2 The excavation

After a tedious process of removing a large layer of demolition, a layer of silt, on which lay broken tiles and numerous cut stones, was unearthed in Room A. These cut stones were a great novelty at the site. Their presence seemed to indicate that a collapse had taken place before their recovery and gave hope that there would be preserved layers underneath. They were fragments of arches, corbels, lintels, which indicate the existence of a neat construction. They are mostly granites.

According to the geological report by Messrs. Ozouf and Coutard:

- "The rock comes from the batholith of Vire-Carolles (...).   The closest known farms to Gavray were located in Noirpalu and Bourguenolle, about 14 km to the south."

- During the excavation of the same rooms, a blunt quadrangular block of soft, yellowish Miocene shell falun was discovered. This presence is intriguing. This type of rock is only known from the Col du Cotentin and the Rennes basin. As far as the Cotentin is concerned, faluns were exploited as ashlar (sarcophagi, keystones for church vaults, stones for openings) in Saint-Georges-de-Bohon, Sainteny, Auxais, Picauville. There is also a deposit on the west coast of the Cotentin at Gouville.

Often, the isolated blocks come from other monuments and are reused over a more or less long distance.                                            

This layer of silt is not flat but in the shape of a bowl, marking a clear subsidence towards the center of the piece, it presents two anomalies:
- One is a hole dug at the foot of the stairs: it corresponds to a tearing of the step slabs. Evidently we tried to reach the bottom of the stairs,

- the other, in the south-west corner of the room, the stringer forms  a "flow" along the west wall, as if it had slipped from a higher level.

The search of room A provided certainty that the two rooms A and B communicated. However, the first level of occupation had just been unearthed in A, it was more than 3 m below the level of the filling of the room B.Au during the clearing work of room B, as in room A, some beautiful cut stones appeared, of the same type and nature.

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